Next to Natalie
by Allyswrites
Summary: Next to Normal, told from Natalie's perspective. [complete]
1. Just Another Day

**Author's note:** This is my first attempt at writing fanfiction. Thank you for reading, and please review!

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own Next to Normal.

 **Chapter One  
**

I rolled over to look at the clock. The glowing numbers read _2:00 am_. Groaning, I pulled the covers over my head and prayed to fall back asleep, although I already knew I'd have no such luck. Almost every night, I woke up at an obscenely early (or late, depending on how one chose to look at it) hour. After a few minutes of restlessness, I'd turn on my light and reach for my books. Never would I let myself lie there in silence. I know some people find silence calming, but for me, silence is like when you can hear a mosquito buzzing around the room and can't find it; silence is the pesky humming of your thoughts, and there's no "off" switch to be found. So I avoid silence by giving up on sleep pretty quickly and turning my focus to other things. Like school.

School is a bit of a paradox for me. On one hand, it's over seven hours that I don't have to be in my house, and when I am home, it's all the time I spend doing homework and not listening to the insanity downstairs. But on the other hand, I have this need for perfection that I can't seem to shake, and schoolwork is a breeding ground for perfectionistic frustration. For instance, when I arrive at English class in twelve hours, I have to hand in my paper on floral imagery in Flowers for Algernon. My paper has yet to be written, although I have finished it three times—and I have deleted it three times, because it wasn't perfect enough. Not even having the highest average at my school will convince me that I'm on the right track. Anyway, I neither love academics nor hate them, but it does provide relief from my personal life, and I'm grateful for that.

So like all the other nights, I turned on my light and got out my books. Cringing at the memory of my last attempt at the Flowers for Algernon essay (I got as far as printing it out, then decided it still wasn't good enough and, impulsively, threw the pages in the kitchen sink and lit a match over them), I decided to tackle the essay during lunch. Instead, I opted for studying calculus. When I began getting tired again, I gathered all my material, turned off the light, and crept downstairs. I never went back to sleep after I woke up. If I did, it was only by accident.

I turned into the kitchen, in search of caffeine, and rolled my eyes as I heard Mom begin chattering away to nothing. For the past week, she'd been sitting up most of the night. When I came downstairs, she didn't notice, not even when I opened a can of Red Bull with a sharp _pop!_. Sometimes she was talking, sometimes she wasn't. Tonight she was giving reprimands in a not-so-stern tone. I didn't want to think about how she was scolding my brother—my _dead_ brother.

"Who's up at this hour?"

I froze. That voice belonged to my father, who was still very much alive. My parents exchanged some brief words I couldn't make out, and then Dad went back upstairs. I listened to Mom shuffling around for a while, then gathered my books and Red Bull and crossed from the kitchen into the dining room. Even though the dining room and living room are connected, I'd thought Mom wouldn't notice me, because she usually didn't. This time was an exception, however.

Because caffeine really wires me up, I was already in a frenzy about everything I had to get done; I started when Mom addressed me.

"Natalie!" she exclaimed.

 _Shit._

"It's four in the morning. Is everything okay?"

"Uh, everything is great," I said, sounding more anxious than I would have liked. I set everything down on the table with a _thump._ "Why wouldn't it be great? It's great! I've just got three more chapters of calculus, a physics problem set, a history quiz, oh, and two pages on floral imagery in Flowers for Algernon." Not wanting to sound stupid or overwhelmed, I hurriedly added, "Which is just like, duh. Everything is cool, it's just like, calm." I tried to calmly take a sip of the energy drink, though I worried the effect was more on the maniacal side.

My mom regarded me for a moment before saying, "Honey, you need to slow down. Take some time for yourself! I'm going to go have sex with your father." And with that, she peeled off the thick sweater she was wearing over her nightgown, tossed it on the table, and headed upstairs.

I laughed in disbelief. "Great, thanks," I muttered sarcastically. "I'm so... glad I know that."

I absently picked up the discarded sweater and folded it neatly, placing it on a chair. I wondered how I had managed to survive so long in a house where it was not unusual to be up at ungodly hours talking to dead people and to broadcast your sex life to your teenage daughter.

I sighed as I took another gulp of Red Bull and sat down. Sometimes, just trying to get through felt like dying. But that's the way it was, and I couldn't see the circumstance changing. Every day was just another day, and that was that.

When natural light began to filter through the curtains, I threw my empty can in the trash bin and took everything upstairs. I had no desire for either of my parents to find me studying in my pink pajamas. I had been meaning to replace the old, hideous ensemble for a while, but something else always seemed more important (like picking my mom up from the floor of Costco—again—or cleaning up all the broken glass after my mom hurled dishes at the wall while arguing with her husband).

I changed into jeans and a T-shirt, put on a little mascara, and pinned my hair away from my face. I tidied my room and organized my backpack, and then looked around for some other way to procrastinate family interaction. I opened my computer and checked my email. Not much, mostly junk (god knows how they got my email address), but there was one message of note: "Piano recital scheduled for January 29." Good. So there was something going right.

Mom was already busy in the kitchen when I came downstairs.

"So," I said, somewhat awkwardly, "I got the date for my winter piano recital. Do you think you guys can come?" I handed her a pencil out of my bag. Knowing her, she'd write it down on a slip of paper, stuff it in her purse, and forget all about it. It was probably foolish to even mention if, but part of me still wanted to believe that things would be different this time.

"Of course." She took the pencil. "We'll put it on the calendar."

"Mom," I stopped her, "The calendar is still on April of last year."

She looked thrown off for about half a second before handed the pencil back to me with a smile. "Oh, well happy Easter!"

"Happy Easter, Mom," I humoured her, somewhat begrudgingly.

I hurriedly got myself a bowl of cereal, not bothering with milk to prevent spending more time in the kitchen. Dad was already in the dining room sorting yesterday's mail when I sat down. "Morning, sweetheart, " he said.

"She's in fire this morning," I replied with a roll of my eyes.

"Oh, I know." He winked at me and went into the kitchen.

"Ew." Now I had both sides of the story. How lovely.

I scarfed down my breakfast and returned to the kitchen to put my bowl in the sink, but stopped short: Mom was on the floor. With three loaves of bread (who the fuck needs that much bread?!) and a bunch of sandwich fillings. She was laying out slices of bread and putting random combinations of stuff on top of them (who needs mustard _and_ mayonnaise _and_ ketchup—and who the fuck puts ketchup on a sandwich anyway?!), then slapping another piece of bread on top and stacking them up to make the Empire State Building of sandwiches.

"Diana," Dad said. "Diana!"

Although I had grown up seeing my mother do wild things, I never got immune to it. I always felt a mixture of shock, embarrassment, disgust, and lately, resignment; there was nothing quite like seeing your mom go off the deep end, but it happened a lot and I might as well get used to it.

Mom's frenzied actions came to an abrupt halt. "I think the house is spinning." She stared at the floor.

"Diana-"

"Dad?" Neither of them seemed to realize I was there.

He looked up. "It's okay, you go on ahead."

There was a silence, and then Mom finally seemed to become aware of what was going on. "Everything is fine," she said, unconvincingly. "I'm making sandwiches. On the floor." Then she started giggling.

 _Oh god._

"You go on ahead," she said to me through her laughter, "You'll miss the bus!"

"Go." Dad nodded.

Needing no further encouragement, I grabbed my coat and dashed out of the house.

I was sure that my "'just' another day"s were much different from most people's.


	2. Mozart Was Crazy

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Next to Normal.

 **Chapter Two**

I always took the early bus to school. I practiced piano before and after school, and this was just one of the many days when I thought, _And thank god for that._ Whatever got me out of the house faster.

On the bus, I sat quietly with my head down, not making eye contact with anyone. For extra measure, I put in earbuds and listened to music; if anyone bothered me, I could pretend not to hear them. It's not that I'm a mean person, I just don't need to be involved in the convoluted dance that is high school social life. I also don't want people to find out just how fucked up my family is. I know most family dynamics have some tone of fucked up to them, but mine absolutely takes the cake.

Anyway, I used to have a small group of friends, but between my mom being cuckoo (though she wasn't nearly as bad then) and the way I often canceled plans due to "family obligations" (meaning my dad was dragging me to family therapy and wouldn't take "no" for an answer), I'd either purposely tried to drive them away, or they'd run away on their own. So I didn't bother with friends anymore. Especially since one of the popular girls decided it'd be funny to befriend me, then humiliate me by making me the butt of some stupid joke. I pretended I didn't care, but _ugh,_ I wanted to erase that incident from my memory. It happened back in junior high, and I still hadn't recovered.

When the bus arrived at school, I shut off my iPod (Mozart's 25th piano concerto—I love Mozart, but seriously, how many piano concertos did the guy need to write?) and was the first one out the doors. Because I was on the early bus, there weren't too many people circulating the building, which is how I liked it. I usually arrived at my classes exactly on time, and I was always the first one to leave when we were dismissed. My entire day was centred around avoiding people and practicing piano. Sometimes I wished for human companionship, but then I began thinking about all the potential problems with that and the longing went away.

Upon my arrival, I immediately went to the practice room I'd reserved. The school secretary didn't even have to ask me when I wanted the room; I wanted it for an hour before school and two hours after, five days a week, always, without fail. On this day, I was working on the piece for the student recital. Sure, it was only September, but there was never enough time for perfecting things. This recital was my opportunity to prove myself; a "talent scout" from Yale University (my dream school) was coming to watch kids play. Of course, anybody who caught their eye would still be required to go through a formal audition, but it was certainly a leg up.

I've always been fascinated by music and the making of it, although god knows where I got that from (Dad has a dusty collection of tapes that I don't think he's listened to in decades, and the only music I've seen Mom interested in is the song that old music box plays). I took up piano in grade five, back when we still lived on Walton Way. An older girl on the street started giving lessons to make some extra money before going to college, and I begged my parents to let me try it. I'd begged them for music lessons before, but there was never enough time for me to practice or Dad to drive me somewhere, or Mom needed peace and quiet, or "it's just not the best idea;" there was an endless slew of excuses.

But finally—and to this day, I still haven't figured out why—I got the answer I wanted. I took piano lessons from this girl for a year, and when I was eleven, I started biking half an hour to the music store for classes and practice sessions. I did this for two years, until we moved. While my parents were building our new house (our old one was mostly destroyed in a fire. I have a picture of the remains, because my dad is one of those obsessive people who documents every moment of life), I was busting my ass to get into high school early, where there was easy access to a piano. While I was still biking to the music store for my lessons, we'd tried renting a piano for me to practice at home, but my mother couldn't stand listening to the repetition or the metronome. So I was stuck going to school to get my piano fix.

To this day, music is like my religion. There was always something soothing about the cold, hard keys, and I loved being able to lose all my baggage for a few hours a day. If I wasn't actively making music, I was listening to it. The sound of Mozart or Debussy prevented silence from creeping in. And sometimes all you needed was an angst-ridden Mahler symphony to drown out all your troubles.

On top of all that, music was my ticket out of this place...

 _Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!_

...that is, if I could ever get it right.

I leaned on the keyboard with my head in my hands and took some deep breaths. Then I placed my fingers back on the keys and calmed myself down by listing all the reasons I liked the piece and liked to play.

"One:" I said aloud as I played. "Mozart was crazy, but his music's not crazy. There's harmony and logic; you don't hear his doubts, or his debts, or disease.

"Two: If you work hard enough, you can graduate early and get into Yale, and then you're done with all of this shit, and there's nothing your paranoid parents can say.

"Three: Everything else goes away."

So absorbed was I that I didn't hear the practice room door creak open. It wasn't until I caught a glimpse of his hideous plaid, flannel shirt that I stopped.

"Sounds good!" He said with a grin.

I couldn't tell if he was mocking me or not. "I still have this practice room for"—I glanced at the clock—"seven and a half minutes."

The boy nodded. "Yeah. I mean," he added, as if he was trying to sound more sophisticated, "I know. I'm Henry." He held out his hand, obviously expecting me to shake it.

"Natalie." I ignored his offering and stared at him instead.

Henry let his hand fall awkwardly, trying to pretend I hadn't just shot down his friendly greeting. "Yeah," he said again. "I mean, I know."

"It's a little creepy that you know," I said. Why was he still here? I wasn't going to fall for another repeat of the junior high friendship fiasco.

"We've gone to school together for six years."

I let my eyebrows go up. "Really?"

"I usually sit behind you." He sounded a bit discouraged that I clearly hadn't noticed him before.

"That's also creepy." Despite my uninterested appearance, something about the open, enthusiastic nature of this boy intrigued me.

He tried again. "You're in here before school and after."

"Right." I couldn't think of anything else to say. "Seven minutes."

He was already closing the door when I surprised myself by blurting, "You give up way to easily!"

 _Fuck! Just keep your goddamn mouth shut, Natalie_.

That made Henry pause. He stuck his head back into the room. "Um, you're kind of a confusing person."

I chuckled without humour. "You should meet my mother," I responded cryptically.

I put my hands back on the keys and began to play again, hyper-aware that Henry was still there, watching me. When there was exactly two minutes left until first period, I stood up and gathered my belongings.

"Do you play?" I asked Henry as I swept past him and into the hallway.

"Yeah," he said. I wished he'd stop saying that. "But not classical. Jazz."

I wrinkled my nose. Call me a music snob, but I didn't have a lot of respect for anything that couldn't be written down and perfectly replicated. There didn't seem to be much skill to it; anyone could throw together a bunch of notes and call it music. It took talent to write complex melodies with a coherent structure. And I was only interested in things with structure, because nothing good ever came of aimless wandering.

"Well, I disapprove, but maybe you'll convince me otherwise." I surprised myself yet again. "See you later."

As I continued on to my class, I wondered what on earth I was thinking; "convince me otherwise" indeed. It could have been flirting, except for the mostly-bland, mildly-snarky tone.

I rolled my eyes. Silly me. Nothing good could come of this.


	3. Henry the Jazz-playing Stoner Boy

**Author's note:** Thank you for the encouraging words!

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own Next to Normal.

 **Chapter Three**

Since that morning, Henry and I had been spending a lot of time together. He usually joined my afternoon session, mostly because I told him I actually needed to get things done and to leave me alone in the morning. However, I did know that he still came in the mornings, lurking outside the door, listening to me play. His position was not only a brilliant spot for eavesdropping on my practice, but a brilliant spot where he could familiarize himself with my dictionary of expletives, which I referenced often. As far as I could remember, the worst thing I'd ever done was continue swearing after various authority figures had, on multiple occasions, told me to "watch it." My dad tried to moderate the language I used, but it wasn't like he could really do anything about it, or like we even spent enough time together for him to grasp the full extent to which I swore. After all, he was too busy looking after (and chasing after) my mom. And though I knew it was great that he was such a devoted husband, it would have been an understatement to say I was a little bitter that he couldn't take the time to be a devoted father as well. It especially made my blood boil when he told me to have more compassion for my mother and to stop acting so childish; I wasn't usually the one screaming and crying and setting things ablaze (the _Flowers for Algernon_ essay incident aside). But I digress.

The first afternoon Henry and I hung out at the piano was on the same day of our initial encounter. I was already there when I heard the doorknob turn. For whatever reason, he seemed to lose his nerve and backed away at the last moment. I could hear him pacing outside while I played through the slow movement. Nearing the end of my second run-through, I finally lost patience.

"Are you actually going to come in, or are you just going to cower outside?" I yelled, triplets still pouring quietly from the instrument, the notes blending and clearing as I lightly pressed and released the damper pedal.

The door opened. "Um, yeah." _Here we go again._ "I mean, hi."

I stopped playing and twisted around to look at him. "Do you know any words other than 'yeah'?"

To Henry's credit, he caught the offending response before it rolled off his tongue. "Of course," he said instead. "But I mean, there's nothing really wrong with 'yeah' and maybe it's the right word for the moment…."

He trailed off as I raised an eyebrow. There was an uncomfortable pause, during which Henry seemed to struggle to recollect his thoughts, and I struggled trying to remember what it was this morning that had prompted me to, basically, ask him to stay.

I turned back to what I knew best: music. People and relationships were complicated, but music was simple. As long as one followed the plan, things typically worked out. (Although, knowing Henry's different taste in genre, I knew I wasn't likely to get pretty melodies.)

"Do you want to play?" I offered.

"Yeah. I mean, yes. Sure. Okay."

I stared at him another moment before standing up from the bench and offering it to him. He was acting ten times more awkward than when we'd previously met, if that were even possible. It didn't escape my notice that he seemed to have paid quite a lot of attention to me over the years—he knew a surprising amount about my routines, and what was it, six years he said we'd been going to school together?—and I knew, logically, that suggested he had some romantic interest in me, though what he saw, who he thought I was, was beyond me.

No worries; it would only be a matter of days before he ran for the hills.

I studied Henry as he sat down, taking in the worn quality of his clothing (I wasn't much concerned with looking stylish, but his shirt really was ugly) and its contrast with the crisp whiteness of his sneakers. His light hair had a just-out-of-bed look, but in his case, it looked organic, unlike the manufactured just-out-of-bed look that you know required ages spent preening in front of the mirror. He was built like a beanpole, but given my own slender figure, I wasn't in a position to criticize that. I did, however, criticized his posture at the keyboard, although felt something close to admiration regarding the casual way he brought up his hands, only briefly glancing at the position of his fingers. Such a simple motion, so easy.

"What's your excuse?" I asked before he began to play.

Henry laughed and turned his head to look at me. "What?"

I gestured to the piano in response. "What makes you do this?"

"I like to play." Henry's expression was somewhere between amused and nonplussed.

"That's sweet," I said, a touch sardonically. Of course, I liked to play as well, but that wasn't the reason I did it—not the only reason, anyway. The idea of doing things "just for fun" always puzzled me; if it wasn't going to get you anywhere, why bother?

It was Henry's turn to stare at me. I allowed it for a few seconds, then gestured again to the piano, this time in a "go on" sort of way.

I tried to listen with an open mind, or at least deluded myself into pretending to try, but I wasn't impressed by Henry's jazz.

"You'd be good if you played classical," I remarked when his music came to an ambiguous end.

"It'd be good if you branched out from classical," he shot back, chuckling again.

And so it began. Somehow, I found myself, every afternoon, practicing jazz improv instead of Mozart and Grieg and Mendelssohn. Though I still made regular disdainful comments:

"There's no point," I said on one occasion. "Jazz is just making shit up."

"Which is also known as the act of creation," he argued.

"You would say that," I snickered, "being one of those pretentious stoner-types."

"That's totally unfair." Henry paused. "I'm not _pretentious_."

I rolled my eyes as he giggled at his own joke, practically proving my point.

"And I'm definitely not classical," he added, as if "classical" were an unfortunate personality trait. "It's so rigid and structured. There's no room for improvisation; you have to play the notes on the page."

"Right, and what did Mozart know anyway?" I said, deadpan. "He should have just smoked a bowl and jammed to _Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star._ "

Henry giggled again. "Yeah, let's do that!" He played the basic theme of _Twinkle, Twinkle_ once through, then began riffing off it. When he was done, he managed to nudge me into trying it, too. In fact, Henry managed to talk me into a lot of things I never thought I'd do. He taught me how to disregard traditional playing techniques, and he taught me how to "ride the musical wave." Who knew how he did it, but Henry's care-free personality got to be infectious if one spent enough time with him. Of course, at all other times, I was my usual—to use his word—"uptight" self, but I felt myself loosen in his presence.

Time somehow passed without my noticing. The temperature dropped, the days grew darker quicker, crisp leaves fluttered down from the trees, and then the vibrant colours turned into a dull brown. Family life stayed much the same: My mother visited her psychopharmacologist nearly every week and was always on some complicated combination of pills that gave her side effects which she often talked about, sometimes humorously, sometimes dramatically, sometimes lifelessly; my father was too wrapped up in his work and my mother and her shifting regime of crazy-candies to pay much attention to me (what else was new?); I continued to avoid my parents as much as possible—a greeting in the morning and usually some small-talk over a microwaved dinner; but throughout all of that, I found myself looking forward to my time in the practice room with Henry. I still liked to pretend I wasn't interested in associating with him, although the fact that I hadn't yet told him to go to hell gave the truth away.

Despite the astounding frequency that I would oblige Henry's requests that I try some jazz improv (like every day), we still engaged in banter over the classical vs. jazz issue.

" _Oscar Peterson was classically trained."_

" _Beethoven did cocaine."_

" _Miles Davis went to Julliard."_

" _Mozart wrote poems about farts."_

I was—miraculously—pretty content with the way things were going. Natalie Goodman had made a friend. Ha! Bet nobody saw that one coming. (If anyone ever noticed me, that is.)

Then one day, Henry asked if I'd come over to his house after school. For what was maybe the first time in god knows how long, I didn't hesitate before saying yes.

To my surprise, Henry's mother didn't object to her teenage son going into his bedroom with a teenage girl and shutting the door. She was mild-mannered and greeted me warmly, although there was a slightly absent quality to her gaze. I didn't meet Henry's father, or the sister who had been mentioned once in passing. I decided not to ask Henry about his family life, mostly to avoid telling him about mine. (And I knew that even when I did reveal the details, I sure as hell was going to keep Gabe a secret; no need to get into the gory bits.)

"Make yourself at home," Henry said as he crossed over to the window and opened it. His second matter of business was to unearth a joint from under his bed and start smoking.

I glanced at the door. Despite it being closed, the stuff had a powerful stench that had to have permeated the entire house. "Your mom is in the next room," I said in disbelief.

"She's in denial." Henry giggled. "It's totally convenient. Dude," he added when I continued to look at him skeptically, "it's therapeutic."

"Right," I scoffed. "It's medical marijuana to treat your ADD."

"Totally!" He took another puff, then looked at me vaguely. "Wait, what?" He held out the pipe in offering.

I shook my head. "I don't put anything in my mouth that's on fire." I said it with an implied "duh" at the end of my sentence.

"I guess that's a good rule." Henry gazed at me with his mouth hanging open. When he started moving forward to kiss me, a combination of shock and uncertainty about the matter kept me in place at first. Then I came to my senses and stood up, forcing him to move back. "Um," I said loudly, moving to put some distance between the two of us. "Okay, look"—I lowered my voice so his mom wouldn't overhear us—"I can't do this. I'm like, one fuck-up away from disaster."

I didn't necessarily not _want_ to do it, but everything about it smacked of being a bad idea.

"Your life is not a disaster _._ " As if he thought it would make me feel better, he began to list the things that were more disastrous than my life. "The environment is a disaster. Sprint is a disaster."

I rolled my eyes. "You're stoned," I pointed out bluntly. "What you say at this moment does not apply to real life."

He ignored me and continued his tirade. "Our planet is poisoned—the oceans, the air—around and beneath and above you."

"All right," I conceded, "that's true, and I totally care."

"I'm trying to tell you I love you."

 _Wait._ "What?"

"The world is at war, filled with death and disease. We dance on the edge of destruction. The globe's getting warmer by deadly degrees." His voice grew louder as he rattled off this things.

"This is one fucked-up seduction," I hissed, motioning for him to keep it down. Deciding that the best course of action would be to leave and let the marijuana wear off, or at least wait for him to be less freshly-stoned, I left the room. To my relief, I didn't encounter any of Henry's family on the way to the front hall, nor did I see them as gathered my coat in my arms and pulled my backpack over my shoulders.

Henry followed me, still listing the reasons that Earth and the human race were fucked beyond repair. He finally changed course when we were halfway down the steps to his house. "I could be perfect for you," he said.

I stopped briefly to look at him, then resumed my attempts to walk away.

"I might be lazy and a loner and a bit of a stoner," he admitted with a tiny shrug, "but I could be perfect for you."

"You've got some nerve, Henry," I said, shaking my head, then privately added, _And I'm just all nerves._

He began rambling again, talking about why he'd be perfect for me. When we stood on the street in front of my house, he suddenly grabbed my hands. "I can't fix what's fucked up," he said, "but I know I can be perfect for you."

I looked at our intertwined fingers instead of at his face. "Perfect for you," I echoed softly.

This time, when he leaned down to kiss me, I let him.

The hint of a smile crossed my face.


	4. Happy Birthday, Dear Brother

**Author's note:** Hopefully the structure of this one isn't confusing. I was trying to get in something about Natalie's childhood and explicitly establish her feelings for Gabe. I'm glad people are enjoying it!

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own Next to Normal.

 **Chapter Four**

Henry walked me home today. He always did, because he was—to use his word—a "gentleman" (although he said it half-jokingly). He kept pestering me to invite him in and I kept refusing, because I didn't want him meeting my nut-job parents; Mom and Dad's knowledge of his existence was bad enough. Not that my parents were upset by the fact that I was dating, it's just that I would have liked to keep the whole thing a secret. But that was impossible from the start, thanks to my spying mother.

After I said goodbye to Henry, I found her perched on the back of the sofa. She grinned and motioned with her hands, obviously wanting to know about the boy. I gave her a look and ran upstairs to my bedroom. _God,_ I'd thought, _doesn't she have anything better to do than watch her daughter make out? That's just gross._ Dad, besides awkwardly trying to give me a sex talk (I cut him off with an eye roll and, "Dad. I'm sixteen. I know."), was surprisingly positive about it. I had expected him to find some reason for protest, but he seemed relieved that I was spending time with somebody…. Admittedly, it was even more surprising that he even noticed my lack of friends.

My dad hadn't always been so clued-out. True, for as long as I could remember, he had been catering to my mom, but he'd actually been quite involved in my life when I was younger. My earliest memory was of him and I building things out of brightly-coloured wooden blocks: A favourite game of mine was the one where we built a castle around me (the princess stuck in the tower), and then he'd (my knight in shining armour) come knock down the palace walls and rescue me. There are several pictures of us playing this and variations of it, and in every single one of them, we both look happy as can be. In fact, if someone went through the family photographs, they'd find loads of pictures of a much-younger me looking happy and Dad (also much-younger) looking happy and both of us together looking happy. Up until I'm about seven or eight, the evidence would suggest that we have a great relationship.

When it comes to the question of whether there was an exact moment our bond deteriorated (though I thought that was unlikely) or if it happened gradually, my memory fails me. I remember him being my beloved father, then cut to a few years later and we're engaged in the third fight of the day—all before 8:00 am. I looked through the photo album once, trying to figure out what happened, and all I could see was that I appeared progressively less content. By age twelve, I look indifferent at best and miserable at worst in nearly every frame. (There is one from the summer before grade ten where the entire family is smiling heartily at the camera, but if one looks long enough, traces of Photoshopping become obvious.)

As the snapshots of happy times dwindle, my mother becomes featured more often. In the first few years of my life, the photographic evidence of her presence is nonexistent. And if my mother is present, you can probably place a safe bet that something weird was happening: There are a couple, from two separate occasions, where my mom is sitting at the table catatonic, gazing at a chocolate birthday cake, and I look like I want the floor to open and swallow me up. (I remember that both times I wondered why on earth it was an event my father wanted to document); there's another of my mom in the pool, fully clothed, at one of my swim meets—again, I look like I want to melt into the floor. (That was only last year, and if I see people from the group—I quit after that incident—they still like to bring it up); and there's a picture of my mom asleep on the floor, surrounded by streamers and twinkle lights she was using to decorate with, in preparation for some phantom birthday party. And then there are photos of damaged property, which smack of my mother's doing: Our house on Walton Way after it was ravaged by the fire (the fire which my mother started by accident), or a dent in the hardwood floor that was created when my mother accidentally dropped a bowling ball. (I still don't know why she even had a bowling ball. I mean, seriously, a _bowling ball?_ She was just lucky the damn thing hadn't broken her foot.)

I trace everything back to my brother. He was the catalyst for the Goodman family's start on the road to hell in a handcart. It was because of him that Mom went crazy, and because Mom went crazy, she was distant from me and Dad had to look after her a lot, and because Dad had to look after her a lot, he stopped looking after me as much as I wanted and needed, and because of that, etc., etc. The irony was that my brother had never lived past eight months old. He had been dead for longer than I'd been alive, and I hated him with a passion. Of course, I blamed my parents plenty, but it was easier to place the majority of it on Gabe, because I didn't have to interact with him every day.

"You okay?"

Henry's question brought me out my head and placed me back in the real world. I couldn't even remember what my original train of thought was; how had I gotten onto seething over my brother again? _Oh, right. Dad actually knows I don't have friends, so he doesn't mind that I have a boyfriend._

Boyfriend. How strange. Certainly not a word I thought I would ever have any associations with. Even though I technically knew that Henry and I were boyfriend and girlfriend, I resisted using any language that even hinted at romance for quite a while. Whereas Henry was thrilled with this development and had no qualms about referring to Us, I was more wary of it. Not that I didn't want to be with him, but I always thought that the more officially there was an "Us," the more it would hurt when there wasn't. I had warmed up to the terminology, but its presence in my life still seemed odd.

"I'm fine," I said. "Why do you ask?"

"You've been really quiet since we left my house."

"Right. Just thinking." Even though I knew it sounded dumb, to prevent further questions I added, "About nothing, really."

As was routine, I turned around to face Henry when we got to the foot of my driveway. "Thanks for walking me home." He opened his mouth to ask—as he usually did—if he could come in, but I beat him to it this time with a shake of my head. "I'd invite you in," I said, "but it's too soon."

Henry gave me a look. "We've been going out for nine weeks and three days," he pointed out. "Don't I get to meet your family?"

I smirked. "You keep count?" I snickered. "You're so… the girl. And, no."

I should have knocked on wood, because it turns out Dad had just gotten home from work and seen us through the glass panel in the front door. "Natalie!" He called, stepping out onto the porch. He was still in his suit from work, and I could see his briefcase behind him on the floor. He beckoned to us, and with an inward sigh, I trudged over to him with Henry in tow.

"And this must be Harry." I supposed that the enthusiastic hand-shaking made up for getting the name wrong. He didn't give either of us space to correct him before saying, "Pleasure to finally meet you. Why don't you join us for dinner?"

Although my dad was in a brilliant mood, and my mom hadn't been acting so crazy the past few weeks (for once, she was actually being productive, instead of bouncing from unfinished project to unfinished project, or lying on the couch in a zombie-like state), I still didn't want Henry to spend any amount of time around my parents. Things could fall apart at any second, and the greater the time he spent at my home, the greater the likelihood of his being there when it happened. And I didn't think either of us wanted that.

"Dad," I said, trying to pull Henry back and shove him out the door, to no avail. "Henry can't really stay. He's got, um, homework."

"It's going to be good, Nat," Dad reassured me.

"He has surgery," I tried again. All it did was provoke laughter from Henry. "Rabies!"

Clearly, my desperation was being ignored, and the only thing I could do was to pray I came out of this situation unscathed.

My mom came out to greet us. She was wearing a nice red dress and a white apron with happy yellow smiley-faces plastered all over it (which I found extremely embarrassing, for some reason). "Dinner is almost ready," she said, giving my father a brief kiss and directing a wink to Henry and I. "Nice to meet you, Henry."

 _At least_ someone _has his identity right._

Henry grinned at me as we sat down at the table. "Your parents are cool," he whispered.

But I had warning bells going off in my head. There were four places set at the table, and no way had Mom known that Henry would be here, and the last several times this happened, it ended in tears. Then again, maybe I was overly paranoid and Mom had just accidentally put out four of everything instead of three. The thought prompted a humourless smile.

As my mom crossed back and forth from the kitchen to the dining room, spooning food onto people's plates (when her productive streak began, she started cooking again, which absolutely floored me; homemade dinners had been a thing of the past for years), my dad engaged Henry in small-talk. Although I detested small-talk, Henry seemed fairly at ease and happily answered my dad's questions.

The chatter stopped when my mother turned all the lights off.

"Okay," she said. She appeared in the doorway, carefully holding a large cake. The icing was brown, indicating chocolate flavour. Eighteen candles illuminated her excited face. "It's someone's birthday!"

Despite having suspected that something was not quite right, I hadn't thought the spectacle would be quite so elaborate. This particular fuck-up hadn't happened in four years, and I'd blocked the memories out enough that I could pretend it wouldn't happen again.

Beside me, Henry giggled. "Whose birthday is it?" he asked innocently.

Dad and I looked at each other. His expression was sad.

There was a pause before I, my eyes fixed on a spot in front of me, quietly answered, "My brother's."

In my peripheral vision, Henry's eyebrows went up in surprise. "I didn't know you had a brother."

"I don't." My voice was louder this time. I brought it down again. "He died before I was born."

Henry's face crumpled and he reached out to comfort me, but I shook my head and brushed him away, propping my elbows on the table and hiding my face with my hands.

Mom apparently didn't notice our words, only the grim silence that greeted her entrance, because she asked, "What? What is it?" Her voice sounded too loud.

My dad's chair squeaked as he pushed it back and stood up. "He's not here," he said softly to my mom, in reference to the aforementioned dead brother. "Love, I know you know. He's been dead all these years; you've got to let him go. He's not here." This reiteration was said more emphatically than the first time, but still gently.

I shifted my hands so they cradled my face instead of covering my eyes. My dad had taken the cake from my mother and she was looking at him, confused.

"This is fucked," I growled.

"Language," Dad reprimanded me, sounding distracted.

Just to spite him, I swore again, at a higher volume. "Fuck this!" Then I got up and ran from the scene.

"Uh, it was wonderful to meet you both," I heard Henry hastily address my parents before scrambling after me.

My father could make all the excuses he wanted ("she's just not herself right now" was one of his favourites), but the point I made before was true: the whole thing was fucked.

 _And we all know it._


	5. Superboy and the Invisible Girl

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Next to Normal.

 **Chapter Five**

I shut my bedroom door so hard that the door frame actually rattled. There was a brief pause before it creaked open again and Henry slipped inside the room. "Hey," he said.

"Oh my god." I was pacing around like a caged tiger. "Oh my god oh my god oh my god." I looked up at Henry, who looked a little shell-shocked. "Oh my god," I said again, before stating the obvious: "You're still here."

"Um. Yeah. Did you want me to go?"

"No," I said quickly. "I just… I don't know why you didn't get the fuck out of this place, but… no."

I sat down on the floor and let out a long groan; what I really wanted to do was shriek until all the glass in the house broke, however, doing so would make me too much like _her_. Absently, I wondered if my dad was taking another photograph to add to our dismal, would-have-been birthday log.

" _No!"_ My mother yelled from downstairs.

"So," Henry started tentatively, "your brother…."

I glared at him—did he really think I wanted to talk about that?—but then relented, deciding he deserved to know the whole story. "Gabriel. Dead at eight months old." I held up a hand. "Don't ask why. Nobody ever told me that. Actually," I added, "nobody ever told me anything. I got all my information from hearing my parents argue when they thought I was asleep.

"Anyway, my mom thinks he's alive. She's gone completely 'round the bend. The rest of us are headed in that direction"

"I'm sorry, Natalie."

"You're sorry?" I snorted. "I'm the one who should be sorry. Shit like this happens all the time. I probably should have warned you."

 _I_ definitely _should have warned him._ But the truth was, I was selfish. I wanted him to be mine for as long as possible. I wanted to not be alone anymore for as long as possible. At first, I thought my own freakishness would scare him off; then, I thought the freakishness of my family would scare him off. At the back of my brain was the thought, _Maybe I underestimated him,_ but I pushed the thought away. I had to stay prepared for the day he was gone, because I couldn't let heartbreak get to me. Heartbreak was essentially what made my mother the way she was.

Mom was crying now. I could picture the scene in my head as clearly as if I were there. If I snuck halfway down the stairs and crouched down, curiosity getting the better of me, peeking through the supports of the banister, I'd get a serious case of déjà vu. The only difference between now and then would be about ten years. In the course of an average fight, Dad makes what he thinks is a harmless or even helpful comment; Mom yells at him and then starts crying and blubbering about how nobody understands, and eventually starts yelling again, and probably breaks something; Dad gets this shut-down look, until he finally explodes and begins yelling about "what do you want me to do?" and "I'm doing my best!" and if he's desperate, then it's "Natalie needs you too, you know!" It usually ended with one or both of them storming off to be alone.

The first time I heard my dad play the don't-forget-Natalie card, I was really hurt. At the time, it had seemed like I only existed as some sort of treatment designed to shake my mom out of her delusions. Later, I discovered that was exactly the case. Which, of course, hurt even more.

The sound of metal clattering and skidding against a hard surface echoed up to my room.

"Natalie-"

"I was born to replace him," I interrupted Henry, staving off whatever pitying words were sure to come. "There was one time my mom yelled, 'You said this would be a good idea, but I don't want Natalie, I want my Gabe!'" I shook my head. "I still remember the look on my dad's face. He was so angry that for a moment, I thought he was going to hit her."

I didn't know why he'd gotten as mad as he had. Maybe because Mom was basically blaming him for her current unhappiness, or maybe because that was back when he still loved me, or maybe it was because she said Gabe's name. My father never, ever, ever said Gabe's name. (Mom, however, said it all the time. She was always talking to the alive-and-well Gabriel Goodman in her head, laughing and smiling at nothing with a tender look that she'd never given me.) He never said Gabe's name, never even acknowledged his once-existence, let alone his death, unless my mother was in hysterics about it.

" _I am the one who cares!"_ Dad was shouting now, but Mom's sobbing was still clear underneath him.

"When she gets like this," I looked at Henry, who had decided the best thing to do in this situation was begin rolling a joint, "she's useless. She can't use the phone, can't drive-"

"I bet she's got great pills."

I glared at him again, and this time it was he who relented: "Not that I'd go there. That shit is inorganic."

"And totally ineffective, apparently," I scoffed with an eye roll.

"I'm old-school," Henry confessed. "All the preppies and the jocks are raiding their parents' medicine cabinets, popping Xanax and snorting Adderall"—he didn't seem to notice when I interjected, "Really?"—"but me: I'm the master of the lost art of making a pipe out of an apple." He knelt down in front of me and cupped a hand around his now-compacted marijuana, as if to illustrate this "lost art."

 _"I've always been there!"_

"Yeah," I said, dryly mocking his pattern of speech, "you're the MacGyver of pot." I willingly took the joint from him and inspected it. I still wasn't sure about sticking something in my mouth and setting it on fire, but…. "Do you promise this will help?"

Henry raised his eyebrows, seemingly surprised I was even considering it. "No. What?" he asked when I handed the object in question back to him with a sigh and a sour look.

 _"You don't know!"_ Mom again.

I gave a dark laugh. "You mean what else could possibly be wrong here that I haven't already mentioned?" I didn't give him a chance to respond before saying, "Superboy and the invisible girl; son of steel and daughter of air." I laughed again, this time at how ridiculously poetic my words sounded and the irony of the situation. "He's everything a kid ought to be; he's immortal, forever alive—then there's me."

I stood up, shaking my head some more and holding my arms out to indicate some inexplicable feeling. "I… wish I could fly!" I said finally. "I wish I could fly. And magically appear and disappear. I'd fly far away from here."

The door opened and my mother poked her head in as Henry hid the pot behind his back.

"He's superboy and I'm the invisible girl!" I accused, whirling around to confront her. "He's your hero, he's forever alive, and he's _not here_ , but _I am!"_

My mom shook her head. "You know that's not true," she protested weakly. She sounded like she was a novice actor reciting her lines for the first time. "You're our little pride and joy, our perfect plan."—my eyes narrowed—"You know I love you. I love you as much as I can."

I could not believe that she didn't realize the implications of her words or how stiff her tone was. She realized, she just wasn't interested in selecting either of them more carefully.

Rather than addressing her, I turned back to Henry. My face said, "I told you so." Then I walked away and began tidying my desk. She took the hint (which was less of a hint and more like a hit over the head with the point) and retreated, probably to go work her incredible diplomacy skills on Dad (although, unlike me, he would accept her attempts at remorse).

I let the coloured pencils I was rearranging fall out of my hand. "Just for once," I said to Henry through gritted teeth, still facing the desk, "I would like her to take a look at the invisible girl. Here she is, clear as the day, and I would like her-" I corrected myself, "I would like _someone_ to look closely and find her before she fucking fades away."

Henry was back to looking mildly shell-shocked. I went over to him and held open my hand.

"Give me the stupid joint" is all I said.

After all, he only couldn't promise it would help; he never said it wouldn't.


	6. Unraveling, Part I

**Author's note:** I'm so sorry for the lack of updates! All my classes started up and life kind of hit me over the head. This is on the short side, but a longer one will be coming. Apologies again for the delay!

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own Next to Normal.

 **Chapter Six**

I was getting stoned more often than I liked to admit. It didn't make my problems go away, but it made me feel better equipped to handle them. After that dinner with the birthday cake, piano was no longer enough. Between my mom, my dad, and me, nobody spoke of what had happened. That was how it was in our house. My dad was the biggest offender—and as much as he tried to remember everything, he did an awful lot of blocking out. What was the use, I wondered, of capturing every detail of life in stills if you avoided discussing anything important?

Although it's not like I was in a great position to judge; I told Henry not to bring up the incident. I kept him updated, but I wouldn't talk in length about my family. Instead, we talked about music and art and movies and school. I began tutoring him in practically every subject; it came out that he was only a year ahead because his dad thought the extra work would keep him out of trouble.

" _Did it work?" I asked._

" _Nope," he said with a laugh and a shrug._

Occasionally, I dwelled on the possibility that the cannabis was killing my brain. Even though it wasn't like I was doing crystal meth, marijuana was still a drug, and a brain on drugs is a fucked up brain. Because I tended to value my brain—it being the control centre for playing piano and scoring 100% on tests and running away from whatever needed to be ran away from—these thoughts always made me falter. But then I remembered why I started doing it in the first place and was content enough to continue.

As for my mom, after weeks of being seemingly okay (which couldn't have been expected to last, but it was a huge, unexpected improvement—or so we thought. I guessed it was just the calm before the storm), she was lying around the house in a depressed funk and back at the doctor's every week. Apparently she'd flushed her pills and refused to get put on new ones (or more like a new combination of the old ones, since she'd pretty much tried them all), so my dad went hunting to find someone with an alternative approach. I'd listened to their conversation as they were about to leave for her first appointment:

" _We'll find a someone who will treat you without the drugs," Dad reassured Mom in response to her fear of not liking the new doctor. "There's someone out there for you."_

 _There was a silence and I pictured Mom standing with her arms crossed, a skeptical look etched on her face._

 _Dad tried again. "In the depression chat rooms, they say it's like dating: You've got to keep going until you find the right match."_

 _There was another silence, a longer one, before Mom slowly echoed my own thoughts._

" _They have depression… chat rooms?" It was a cross between a question and a statement of incredulity._

" _This doctor is supposed to be fantastic—a real rock star!" I could hear the smile in his voice. "Three women at work gave me his name."_

"Three _women at work know I'm nuts?!" This time, her response was immediate._

" _Uh…."_

I'd rolled my eyes. My dad was well-intentioned, but he could be so dense.

So far, this new doctor was helping nothing. If anything, when she wasn't moping around all depressed, she behaved even more crazily. I'm not saying any of us had been expecting miracles, but all he was doing was good old-fashioned talk therapy. Granted, it was four times a week ( _Haha,_ I thought sarcastically when Dad relayed the plan, _she must be super fucked-up if he thinks she needs that much therapy. Big surprise there_ ), but talk therapy was nothing Mom hadn't already tried. And she'd tried it with doctors she seemed to like better; she acted strangely around this one—kind of uncertain and apprehensive—which I noticed every time I took her to her Saturday-morning appointment. (Dad talked me into dealing with her on Saturdays.)

One day, on the way to her fourth session of the week, my mother suddenly began telling me about Gabe.

"He wants to be a biochemist," she said, "but his plan is to get into college on a sports scholarship. You've been to his games, haven't you, sweetheart? He's brilliant." A happy sigh, followed by a giggle. "He's so vibrant and full of life"—I almost laughed out loud at that one—"and he's growing up into such a handsome young man. Time flies, doesn't it? It seems like only yesterday that he was born. You're so fortunate to have him as your brother."

My fingers tightened on the steering wheel. At least she remembered that I was her daughter, but I didn't want to hear it in that context. Thank god the doctor's office was our destination, although the irony didn't escape me.

After herding her into Dr. Madden's room, I made my way over to the receptionist.

"Hi," I said with a tight smile, attempting to cover my frayed nerves. "Where's the washroom? Thanks."

I went in the direction indicated, taking my cellphone out of my pocket and dialing the home number. I hit "call" as soon as I closed the door.

"Natalie," Dad sounded surprised.

"She's not getting better," I said bluntly. No reason to draw out the conversation with pleasantries.

"Of course she is"—my father, the King of Denial—"it's just hard to see from day to day."

"Dad," I hissed through clenched teeth, "she spent the car ride talking about _him._ "

There was a silence on the line. That announcement obviously changed things. I shifted my weight and leaned against the door as I waited for his response. When none was forthcoming, I asked, "This is never going to get better, is it? He's never going away."

Dad sighed. "I don't know, Natalie."

Even though I wasn't optimistic about the situation, part of me wanted him to be. Part of me wanted him to be confident in telling me that I was wrong. Not with the tone of false positivity that he was always putting on—when he said things like "it's just hard to see from day to day"—but with real conviction behind his words.

"You know," I said, suddenly pissed and struggling not to raise my voice, "this is one of those moments when you could just be a typical parent and lie and say 'yes.'"

From the other side, an exhale sounding as angry as I felt came in reply. "Yes!"

"Thanks, that's comforting." I put as much venom into the words as I could.

"You know, Natalie"—I got the impression he was mocking me—"it's not all about your comfort. It's about helping your mother."

I hung up.

 _As always,_ I thought bitterly.


	7. Unraveling, Part II

**Author's note:** Another short chapter to complement the previous one. I promise a longer one will be coming!

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own Next to Normal.

 **Chapter Seven**

My phone vibrated with a text from Henry. " _where are u?_ "

I looked at the message, but didn't respond. I had more urgent things to do.

" _u get sick?_ "

I shuffled through the medicine cabinet. It was filled with remedies for various ailments (although some of the cough syrup bottles were so dusty that I guessed they'd expired at least four years prior), but I didn't see what I was looking for.

" _wait are u cutting class?_ "

They had to be here somewhere.

" _natalie!_ "

 _Damn it!_ Annoyed with both the futility of my search and the constant buzzing of my phone against the bathroom counter, I picked up the device and returned it to my room, dropping it on the bed and scowling at it as though it were a young child throwing a temper tantrum. It continued alerting me to Henry's persistent badgering about my location, but I left it and went back to my hunt.

Upon my return to the bathroom, I noticed something I had missed before: the black tote bag that Mom used to take to her psychiatrist appointments. _Bingo,_ I thought triumphantly, opening it to reveal bottles of old pills. Although Mom had flushed some of her medication, it seemed obvious to me that she couldn't have flushed it all, because our septic tank would have overflowed if she had. That never happened, so clearly there were some pills she'd overlooked. And as it turned out, there were _many_ that she'd overlooked. Not surprising, because she possessed quite the stash, and she'd only thrown out the ones she'd been taking at that time.

I pulled out a few bottles and carted them to my room. ("New messages: 20" flashed across the screen of my phone, and I made a mental note to later tell Henry to stop being such a terrier.) _Risperdal, Valium, Xanax,_ I read the labels as I unscrewed the top of each container and removed some of the contents. I faltered for a moment, looking around guiltily as if I expected someone to lunge at me from the shadows. I knew the house was empty—it was half past one on a Tuesday afternoon, and my mother was back at Dr. Madden's while my father anxiously tapped his foot in the waiting room—but it felt like I was holding the embodiment of danger in my hands, little capsules of mental explosives.

"What the hell," I said aloud, decisively, and swallowed three bundles of danger, washing them down with the bottle of water I kept near my bed. Now all I had to do was wait for them to work.

In the mean time, I decided to relocate the bag of crazy-candy bottles to underneath my bed. I had the feeling that I'd be making use of it again in the future. A small part of me felt like a thief, but the rest of me reasoned that nobody would miss it; Mom refused to take any of the stuff and it had probably been sitting there unnoticed for ages, indicating that Dad hadn't made plans to dispose of the drugs. On top of that, and most importantly, I needed it.

I'd failed two assignments. Never before in my life had I ever gotten a mark lower than 90%. I would rather have killed myself than gotten anything lower than a 90, and yet in my backpack sat a research paper and a chemistry test stamped with 42 and 30, respectively. I needed at least 50% to pass. These weren't major contributors to my final grade, but they still counted for something, and I was furious with myself. Of course, I knew that bailing out of all my afternoon classes wasn't going to help matters, but it seemed to me that it wouldn't be too detrimental either, since failing anything was pretty much rock-bottom. And I'd learned from watching my parents that the solution to rock-bottom was medication, whether that be self-medication or prescribed medication. Medication didn't necessarily work, but my dad had proven long ago that at least it made you feel like you were doing something.

Music was originally how I self-medicated, but now it was a straightjacket; I was sure that if I were even in the same room as a piano, something would go wrong, something would be lost to the wilderness of imperfection. So sure of this was I that I'd gone to the school secretary and requested an alternate recital date, a later one. I needed all the time I could get, because between spending more time fooling around with jazz and my growing—and now substantial—reluctance to play, there was a strong possibility that I was doomed. I almost backed out entirely, but I didn't like to just quit, even if staying meant I was only hanging on by a thread.

The pills were simply a way to keep me hanging onto my thread—which seemed to be unraveling quite rapidly—for as long as possible.


	8. Molasses in the Hourglass

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Next to Normal.

 **Chapter Eight**

Time slowed down. My breathing slowed down. My thoughts slowed down. Even silence seemed to slow down, to the point where it was barely noticeable. Everything slowed down, which was just fine with me. That, I discovered, is what the combination of Risperdal, Valium, and Xanax did to me. Other pills, of course, did other things, but my first experience with recreational drug use (or perhaps misuse) was quite pleasant.

Henry was not amused.

"You left school to go pop pills?" He asked incredulously. "Who are you and what have you done with Natalie Annette Goodman?"

"Don't use my middle name," was all I had to offer in response.

It was Thursday morning and we were in the practice room at school. I sat cross-legged on the piano bench, turned away from the instrument, facing Henry, who leaned against the wall and gave me a disapproving look. I'd avoided him all Wednesday by wandering around the city, high on Adderall and Prozac. I never really answered his messages, aside from a brief "stop it, I'm fine" text. He didn't stop it, but it did slow him down. I was afraid he'd gone to my house and asked my parents about my absence, but thankfully, he didn't seem to have done that.

"Annette," Henry repeated, just to annoy me.

I grumbled, "It's a stupid, flowery name."

"But seriously," Henry said to get the conversation back on track, "why exactly are you messing with that stuff?"

"Remember way, way back, like months ago, when I told you I'm one fuck-up from disaster?" I asked him. When he nodded, I said, "Well, I fucked up and disaster has happened."

I turned and opened the music for my Mozart sonata, which sat neglected on the piano, then shut it. I hadn't even taken anything and the black ink seemed to swim around the crisp, white page in a gooey, incomprehensible mess. With any luck I still had it memorized, although my luck had been running a little short for the past sixteen years. Bracing myself for the worst, I placed my hands on the keys and pressed down. The first movement was marked "allegro," but to be on the safe side, I took it at more of an adagio. The two lines of music weren't quite in alignment with each other, and I could feel that I slowed down even more for the passage work, fearing it would train-wreck.

"Sounds like Mozart took too much Prozac," Henry said under his breath. I didn't know if I was even meant to hear that remark, but I stopped and twisted back around to look at him.

"Out of the ones I've tried so far," I said a bit snarkily, "they all make my hands shake, so for your information, I'm not on anything right now."

Henry just sighed. "Nat, do you really have to do this to yourself?"

"I don't know what your talking about." I scowled as I resumed my playing. It did sound like Mozart was baked or inebriated, but I wasn't going to give Henry the satisfaction of being right. At least I still knew the notes, rickety as they sounded; thank god for muscle memory.

The days went by and I settled into a routine: I arrived at school an hour early and went to the practice room. Henry didn't join me, because he thought I was working on reviving my recital piece, although usually I just sat at the keyboard, paralyzed with fear. I then went through all my classes and met up with Henry at lunch, where he stuck to me like glue so I couldn't ditch again without him knowing. After school, we went back to the practice room, where I managed to clunk my way through classical repertoire for an hour with difficulty and a touch of shame (given the fact that I was hardly improving, I was pretty sure he knew I didn't actually play in the morning), and then I'd lie on the floor, praying for it to swallow me up, while I listened to Henry improvise. (For the record, Henry's playing was not the reason I wanted to sink into oblivion.) Because he'd made me promise not to take anything during the school day, I went straight home after practice so I could get high. I usually lay in bed just enjoying whatever sensation, unless the pills gave me energy, in which case I became amazingly productive, completing my homework in record time (the quality was absolutely dreadful, but it got done).

On weekends, I spent a lot of time in bed, letting my fried brain cells recover from whatever I'd subjected them to during the week. I wasn't missing any more classes, although I occasionally stumbled into school late on Monday mornings, having hit snooze multiple times out of sheer dread at the prospect of getting through another week. My teachers often stopped me after class and asked what was up, but I gave them my sweetest smile and said that I just felt under the weather. I wasn't interested in attracting the attention of authority figures who were not related to me (though I felt that my mother could hardly be considered an "authority figure" of any kind, seeing as I'd been fending for myself for an awful long time). After their many failed attempts in making me confide, they alerted my parents. ( _Ooh, scary._ )

Dad—though one would like to think was at least subconsciously concerned about his daughter having a problem—let me sell him any sort of fable, so long as I wasn't making things harder for my mother; and Mom and I were never in the same place long enough to have a conversation about anything. (I told Dad that I refused to drive her to her Saturday appointments—or anywhere, for that matter—in part because I didn't trust my hungover self behind the wheel. Drugs made me feel good; drug residue made me feel like shit.) While it bugged me a little that neither of my parents were cornering me and demonstrating their affection by demanding to know what was wrong, for the most part, I was happy to keep dealing the way I was dealing without interference. (Interference from Henry didn't count.) Yes, I wanted their attention, but I only wanted it if it was going to mean something, if it was going to last.

Days turned into weeks, and the eighth of February arrived too soon. The piano recital.

Funny. When I rescheduled, it seemed like I was buying myself a lot of extra time. But it turned out that all I got was ten days.

In any case, I stopped venturing into the Tote of Potential Hell (as I had christened the bag of prescription drugs hidden under my bed after trying a combination that made me feel like death) in the week leading up to the big day. On Day #3 Without Pills, I tried to smoke some weed, but it wasn't as helpful as it was before I tried the edgier stuff. So I raised my caffeine intake and got through without illegal stimulants.

"Dad." I approached him the morning of my performance. He sat at the dining room table, shuffling through a large stack of paperwork.

"Yes, Sweetheart?" He glanced up, but didn't stop what he was doing.

"I have a piano recital tonight at six-thirty," I announced, annoyed, but not deeming this bone worth picking at, "and it would be cool if you could come. You and Mom."

He looked up when I added the last part. (Of course. Any mention of his wife and he was right there.) He frowned slightly and I couldn't read his expression beyond that, but he nodded a few times. "Piano recital tonight at six-thirty," he echoed. "Your mother and I will both be there. I promise." Finally, he smiled. It looked genuine, and I got the impression that his promise was genuine as well.

I was mildly taken aback to have gotten my way so easily, but I gave him a slight smile in response. "Thanks," I said before running back upstairs to my room.

Between the promise of my parents' attendance and the fact I'd actually managed to get some worthwhile practicing done in the past couple days, my hope of getting noticed by "spotters" from Yale was rekindled. The result was a sudden panic over the thought of _What if I don't own anything that looks presentable enough?_

I began rooting through my closet, searching for something nice that still fit. Fashion was not typically high on my list of priorities, so I tended to live in jeans and T-shirts. I did own a few miniskirts and tank tops, but they didn't exactly seem classy enough for a classical music performance. After eliminating pretty much everything, I laid the two outfits on my bed. They were both dresses: one was black, long-sleeved, V-necked, and stopped just below the knee; the other was silvery-blue, sleeveless, stopped just above the knee, and made from a slightly-shimmery fabric. I was pretty sure my mom had bought them on one of her mania-induced shopping craze; neither had been worn yet. Deciding that black was sure to hint at "professional," I carefully folded the dress and placed it in plastic bag, along with two pairs of stockings, a hairbrush, a tube of mascara, and my dress shoes. The whole package went into my backpack for now; I'd transfer it to my locker for storage when I got to the school.

Even without drugs, it was molasses that trickled through the hourglass. I was both terrified and excited for the evening, and I found myself absently playing piano on desks throughout the day. (My nerves probably weren't helped by the insane amounts of coffee and energy drinks I was consuming, but I'd tried cutting caffeine on Day #5 Without Pills and lasted a grand total of two hours before desperately needing something to keep me alert.)

When the bell finally rang, signaling the end of another school day, I headed to the practice room. I hadn't gone in the morning, because I didn't want to tire my fingers; however, when the age-old anxiety hit— _What if it's not perfect?_ —I couldn't help myself.

 _What if I forget the notes? What if I pedal in the wrong spots? What if my tone is wooden?_

Those endless "what if"s always got to me.

After two hours of obsessively running my sonata, I met Henry outside the building to go get dinner. I noticed he'd already put on his Good Classical Music Recital Audience clothing and looked very nice, and it didn't escape my notice that I was still wearing my Normal Day ensemble; I felt like a bit of a slob in comparison. Luckily, we just went to a nearby diner, so I wasn't out of place in that regard. He didn't mention it, but I suspected that he was treating my last-minute invitation of, " _meet me outside school 5:15 2 grab a bite 2 eat?_ " as a Date. I hadn't meant it that way—we spent so much time together that it struck me as silly to distinguish casual hang-outs from formal affairs—but I wasn't going to be a killjoy.

Anyway, I digress. Henry and I steered clear of feather-ruffling topics, split the bill, and a good time was had by all.


	9. Tired of the Game

**Author's note:** I love writing this. It's like a giant character study. As a side note, I was debating whether to call this chapter "Catch Me I'm Falling" or "Tired of the Game" (reference to Maybe), but I settled on the latter, because there's only a brief reference to Catch Me I'm Falling at the end.

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own Next to Normal.

 **Chapter Nine**

I peeked out into the audience. Although spying on the audience pre-concert was technically a no-no, I was desperate to know whether my parents had made it not. Even though Dad had promised me they'd come, I had a strong feeling they weren't here.

"Hey."

I jumped a little, turning around and moving away from the gauzy curtain. Henry stood with one arm behind his back and a grin on his face.

"I'm not supposed to be backstage, but," he held out a bouquet of dark red roses. "For luck."

I barely registered the flowers. "Did you see my parents out there?" I asked, sounding rather distraught, as I brushed past him and began pacing in the wings.

Henry frowned. "Um, are you okay?"

"I'm fine!" I answered a little too quickly, my voice shrill. I took a couple deep breaths before saying, "My dad said they'd both be here."

"Then I'm sure they will be."

I stopped pacing and stared at him. "Will they?" My voice was suddenly quiet, breathy, as if I couldn't quite muster the lung power to speak at a normal volume.

Henry looked at me helplessly as I continued to fidget: pacing, scanning the audience through the curtain, pacing some more. He tried to give me comforting words, but I barely heard him. As hard as I looked, I could not see either of my parents. True, the semi-opaque, golden fabric could be obscuring my view, but I wasn't inclined to be optimistic in this situation.

One of the other girls scheduled to perform—Rebecca, I think, playing a Chopin mazurka—stuck her head around the corner of the wings. "Mrs. Johnston says two minutes," she announced. She looked a bit weirded out by my frantic motions.

I nodded, not trusting my voice.

"Thanks," Henry said for me.

When she was gone, I took another obsessive inventory of audience members. Still no Dan and Diana Goodman.

"God damn it!" I ripped myself away from the curtain and, childishly, stomped my foot, my hands balled into fists.

"Natalie-"

"She's not there! She's not there." Whether I was referring to myself or my mother, I didn't know—perhaps I meant both of us. Either way, I was in a state of obvious distress.

The house lights dimmed before Henry could formulate a response.

Feeling like I was being pulled by a string, I walked to centre stage and sat down at the piano. When the curtains pulled back and the spotlight came on, I felt like a deer in the headlights. I probably looked like one, too.

"Um," was the first thing that came out of my mouth. I gave myself a mental kick. _Way to make a good impression, Natalie._

"Thank you for coming," I stammered. "Natalie Goodman."

I looked down at the sea of black and white in front of me. My brow knitted itself into a frown as I tentatively placed shaking hands on the keys, then relocated them, not sure where exactly they were supposed to be. Every octave looked the same, but sounded different. My mind flashed back to another recital, years ago, when nerves clouded my focus and I accidentally started playing two octaves too low (which is an awfully big shift, so god knows how I managed to fuck that one up without noticing) and all I could do was keep going. I was a wreck after that performance. I predicted a similar outcome in this case.

My mouth felt dry. (Maybe all that caffeine had dehydrated me?) I clenched my hands briefly and took a deep, steading inhale (which didn't help), then jumped off the cliff.

 _Just get it over with,_ I thought, _and then, if you want, you can go home and kill yourself._

I hadn't even made it to the third measure when my second finger hit E flat instead of E natural, and I froze. My brain screamed at me to keep going, but my hands didn't move.

 _Fuck!_

Out of my peripheral vision, I saw Henry cover his eyes with the bouquet he still held—the flowers which I had never accepted and absolutely would not be accepting after this.

Against my better judgement, I looked up at the gathering of people. The stage lights were too bright for me to make out individual faces, but the dead silence said it all. Unlike most silences—in which my head provided an unwanted, running commentary on everything past, present, and future—this was a true, you-could-hear-a-pin-drop silence. I'd thought there was nothing worse than a quiet that gave you time to think, but I was wrong. What I discovered then was that there's nothing worse than a quiet that takes away your ability to think at all. When you're unable to think, there's nothing to grasp onto, nothing to prevent you from fully experiencing your emotions; lack of internal monologue forces you to acknowledge your feelings, whether you want to or not. And at that moment, I felt like I wanted to get off the stage and never see a piano again. It was fight or flight, and I wanted to pick flight.

But I couldn't. And because I knew it'd look even worse to abandon ship entirely, I tried again. When I stumbled in the same place, my hands sprung away from the keys, as though the smooth acrylic had burnt my fingers.

"I'm sorry," I blurted. The words rang through the auditorium and I cringed at their loudness. "I just…." Still more silence as I wrestled with how to proceed. "The thing is, I…."

Ha, where could I go with that? What was I going to do? Admit that the thing is I was really fucked up over the fact one little promise had been broken? Admit that the thing is I had neglected my sonata for months and only brushed up on it in the past few days? Of course, because that would go over well.

I looked to stage left. Henry's wide eyes stared back at me from above clichéd red roses. Silently, I thanked him for teaching me how to improvise.

"You know what the problem with classical is?" I addressed the audience, standing up in my sudden fit of impulsivity. "It's so rigid and structured. You _have_ to play the notes on the page. There's no room for improvisation!" I found myself shouting by the end. My voice cracked a bit on "improvisation."

"Oh no," Henry half-sighed, half-groaned as I sat back down and launched into a frenzied whirl of notes, initially riffing off Mozart, but then going in a completely different direction.

My entire life had been about constructing an intricate set of rules, then playing the game with the utmost precision. It was a balancing system: rigid order to counteract the unpredictable chaos that was my mother. And a lot of good it had done me. She wasn't there, not physically or emotionally, and never had been. Neither she nor my father had ever noticed my carefully-designed blueprint for life… but if they had, they would have been proud, considering they both had degrees in architecture (though Mom annihilated more than she built up). My parents hadn't noticed, because I was the Invisible Girl, and they could pretend to care all they wanted, but I knew the truth; my careful, by-the-book rules hadn't protected me from it. Nothing went according to plan, despite the way I, barring the past few months, followed the plan to a T. Well, I was tired of playing the game I wasn't—and couldn't—win at.

I poured all my angst into the music, which eventually resulted in me just banging the keys at random. When I stopped, I could feel the audience's shock and apprehension about what I would do next. Everyone was staring at me with their mouths hanging open, I knew; everyone could see the Invisible Girl, just not the way I wanted them to.

I stood and bowed stiffly, following performance protocol. Nobody clapped, but I couldn't have expected applause after that display. My hands began to shake again as I made my exit. Because I'd previously wanted to get away so badly, walking off should have been a relief, but it felt more like a walk to the death (though that wasn't an unwelcome prospect).

Chatter began the moment I was out of sight, a hum of whispers rising from the darkened seats. I could hear the other musicians talking amongst themselves, too.

"Um, should we go?"

I avoided Henry's gaze. "Yes," I said flatly.

The next performer made his way to the stage as Henry put an arm around me and guided me down the stairs into the main backstage area. The boy shot me a pitying look, which I noticed and studiously ignored. There were more looks to be held as I did the Walk of Shame past my peers to get out of the building. Their expressions ranged from smugly amused to utterly horrified. I kept my head down and didn't acknowledge any of them.

When we were out of the hall, I detached myself from Henry's extended limb and made a bolt for the door, stopping only once to throw up in a trashcan.

"Natalie!" Henry called as he ran after me. His voice bounced off the walls and echoed in my ear, along with the heavy thumping of his footsteps and the clipped sounds of my high-heeled shoes on the linoleum.

The biting February air hit me as soon as I was out of the building; I drew a sharp breath at the sudden cold.

"Natalie." Henry panted a bit from the exertion of sprinting after me.

I whirled around and threw up my arms in a wild gesture meant to signify god knows what. "The irony just kills me," I proclaimed with a strangled laugh. "The only reason anybody noticed me tonight was because I fucked up so badly. And," I interrupted Henry's reply, "my parents weren't even there to see it."

It occurred to me that I wouldn't have fucked up in the first place had they been present.

"There must have been a good reason," Henry tired to say.

"Oh, there was a reason, all right," I interrupted again, bitterly, "but it sure doesn't justify their absence." I crossed my arms, the temperature getting to me.

"Okay," Henry said after a pause, "I'm going to go back inside and grab your coat and backpack. Then… I don't know, you can come over to my place if you want, or I can take you home."

I stared at the concrete. Henry waited for my reaction, but when none was forthcoming, sighed and turned back into the building. When he was gone, I sat down on the ground and looped my arms around my knees, hugging them to my chest. I sniffed; my nose was running, probably from a combination of the cold and the fact that I was crying now.

When I jumped off the cliff, I fell, and it was too late for anyone to catch me. I'd already hit rock bottom.


	10. Still Falling

**Author's note:** I'm hoping to get a longer chapter up by the end of the weekend. I think the next chapter will cover the end of Act One.

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own Next to Normal.

 **Chapter Ten**

"I've ruined my entire life," I said over and over again.

"You're only sixteen," Henry attempted to reason. "You have plenty of life left. You can't have ruined all of it."

I sniffed, tilting my head to burrow my face in the fabric of my coat, trying to pretend I was cold and not crying, mostly because I didn't want the strangers passing by to look at me funny. (Henry wasn't a concern; he'd seen it before.)

Henry carried my backpack for me as we trudged along to the nearest city bus stop. If my parents had come, they would have driven us back and dropped off Henry along the way, but seeing as things hadn't quite gone as planned, the city bus was our alternative. (Neither of us was carrying money, but we both had bus tokens, because the city bus was always how we got home when we stayed late after school. It was a familiar routine, which was some degree of comfort, at least.)

"I shouldn't have gotten my hopes up," I said. "I'm an idiot."

"You're not an idiot," Henry replied, sounding something akin to stern.

"I hate my parents," I muttered half-heartedly, not entirely meaning it, because hate was too strong of an adjective for my feelings; my relationship with my parents was too complex to be defined so simply.

Choosing, perhaps wisely, not to comment on that particular sentiment, Henry asked instead, "So do you want to come over to my house, or do you just want to go home?"

I sighed and tilted my head back, looking up at the slightly-overcast sky. My breath, no longer blocked by the collar of my coat, escaped from my mouth in hazy puffs as it hit the cold February air.

Henry prompted me again after a few steps without a response. Finally, I said, "I guess I'll come over to your house if that's fine." It wasn't like going home had ever solved any of my problems, and it probably wasn't going to start helping now.

"My parents are out of town at the moment, so you can rant all you want."

This drew out a chuckle. There were many, many occasions during which I paced back and fourth, animatedly relating the details of my angst, while Henry sat very patiently and listened to my tirade. Like taking the city bus from school, me ranting to Henry was a familiar routine.

By the time we were seated on a bus, my tears had stopped, although I didn't feel any better. Henry had a point that life was long and I had plenty of it left, but what I really wanted was to get out and go to a prestigious school and make something of myself. I could still get out, but Yale probably wouldn't accept me after that, even if I blew them away at the audition; nobody wants a performer who cracks so badly under pressure. Although the pressure probably would have been fine, if it weren't for the accumulation of stress from other shit on top of that; and when I was gone and on my own, stress from other shit would probably be greatly reduced, because my home life wouldn't be so atrociously fucked up. Unfortunately, I couldn't go explain that to the audition panel. They probably didn't care what was happening, as long as you were doing better than your best (classical music has the potential to be amazingly cutthroat.)

Henry and I didn't talk on the bus. He tried several times to start a conversation, but I just shook my head. There were few other people on board, but I didn't want anyone to overhear anything. I would have kept my mouth shut the entire ride, if it weren't for my phone ringing.

Since Henry was holding my backpack, he was the one to pull out the device and look at the screen first. "Um, you might want to take this," he said. "It's your dad." He rotated his hand so I could see the screen. Sure enough, "Father Figure" was showing in bright white letters.

I glanced around me. I still didn't want to discuss anything of note in public, but nobody seemed to care about a teenage girl's cellphone ringing, and I wanted to know where the hell my parents were.

"Dad," I answered the call. "Why-"

"I just got back from the hospital," he interrupted me.

I frowned. "Why were you at the hospital?" It wasn't the "why" I had initially planned to ask, but this new question seemed more important at the moment.

For a moment, I thought the line had been disconnected, because there was no sound from the other end. When I insistently repeated myself, my dad said, "Your mother tried to kill herself."

Whatever I'd been expecting, it wasn't that. Sure, my mom was a certified basket case, but I had never gotten the impression that she had any suicidal intentions. Now it was I who was speechless. I bent over, resting my head in my free hand and letting my hair fall to cover my face.

"When… did this… happen?" I enquired robotically, brokenly.

"I called the ambulance around five."

Around five. Around five, I wasn't doing anything of the utmost importance. Around five, I could called off my performance, citing "family crisis." Around five, my dad could have absolutely picked me up and taken me with him, so I could have been there in case my mother, like, _died_. There were a lot of things that could have been prevented and a lot of things that would have been a better use of my time around five.

Dad broke my train of thought by saying, "Dr. Madden says we'll talk to her in the morning."

"Okay." I struggled to form words. "Look, I'm on my home right now. I'll be there soon." I didn't want for a response before hanging up.

Henry looked at me quizzically.

"Mom tried to kill herself I have to go home," I said swiftly and bluntly, running two sentences together in effort to keep emotion out of my voice.

Henry looked at me with a mixture of worry and sadness etched on his face, but he didn't say anything, just wrapped an arm around me and pulled me closer. For that, I was grateful, because I was probably going to start crying again if I tried to speak any more.

 _And just when I thought I couldn't fall any further._


	11. Light in the Dark

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Next to Normal.

 **Chapter Eleven**

"Do you want me to come in with you?"

"I'll be fine." I refused to meet Henry's eyes, looking at the ground between us instead, still trying to keep a tight hold in my emotions.

"Call me," he said softly as I took my backpack from him and moved to stick my house key in the lock.

I nodded without turning around. "Thanks."

The house was dark. The only sounds were the ticking of the grandfather clock, the click as I relocked the front door, and my own breathing. I would have said the place was empty, except that the car was parked in the driveway, and Dad had told me he was home.

I called to my father as I removed my outdoor wear, which triggered the sound of footsteps coming down stairs. "Natalie." He appeared on the landing.

"Dad." I walked up to meet him and scowled. "Why didn't you take me with you?"

"You know," he immediately shot back, "we haven't been seeing much of you these days. Is this Henry a good influence?"

The irony. This was hardly a logical thing to be nagging me about, and it was hardly a good time to do so. "Like, compared to what?" I raised my eyebrows and crossed my arms.

He placed his hands on his hips, taking a step back, looking down and nodding to himself. "Okay, that's fair." He looked up again. "Your mother is in for a new treatment: ECT."

A beat. "Okay," I said slowly, expecting more information. When none was offered, I prompted, "LMNOP, what is that? 'Cause I don't know."

"Electroconvulsive therapy," my dad was answering before I'd finished my sentence.

I gave him a look. "I still don't-"

" _Shock. Therapy._ "

Well. I'd kind of thought that they didn't do that anymore, and if they did, it was only reserved for the particularly crazy—as in, point-of-no-return, totally-fucked, never-getting-better-so-what-the-hell-let's-hit-'em-with-electricity crazy. And I hadn't thought that my mom had hit that dimension (yet). There was absolutely no denying that she was total batshit, but she wasn't so off her rocker as to need fucking _shock_ therapy. Besides, as if zapping someone's brain and inducing seizures helped in the first place.

"Aha…." The weak laugh that came out was humourless. (It seemed that most of the laughter I produced these days was humourless.) "You're joking, right?"

My dad just looked at me.

"Dad! That's bullshit."

It pissed me off that he didn't agree with me, that he was perfectly willing to let them do that to Mom. It pissed me off even more that all he did was reprimand me for swearing.

"Language."

"It's _bullshit!_ She _trusts_ you!" I yelled as I pushed past him and retreated to my bedroom, slamming the door behind me.

"Natalie!"

I ignored him, not interested in another argument, as I dumped my backpack and shrugged off the black dress, leaving it, uncharacteristically, in a crumpled heap on the floor. I swapped the concert attire for my worn pajamas and threw myself face-down on the bed.

She was never going to go for it. There were times (though less so as I got older) when one could catch glimpses of the highly-intelligent woman my mother was when she was young, and in her more lucid moments, she was still quite sharp. Hell, even in her barely-lucid moments, I was sure that she was smart enough to realize what a pile of crap shock therapy—just thinking those words made me shudder—was. And besides that, if she refused to take pharmaceuticals, she'd never agree to do something so extreme as frying her brains out. (Dad, on the contrary, seemed fine with going along with it, so the doctor had clearly spun some tale about how ECT was a sure-fire, magical remedy—nothing else but desperation and empty promises could possibly convince him to allow something so drastic.)

 _I might never see her again,_ suddenly hit me like a ton of bricks. Just because she was in the hospital recuperating, and just because everyone was making plans for when she woke up, didn't mean she was necessarily going to make it. I realized that my dad hadn't said if she was going to be all right, or if they were just hoping she would be. People got rushed to the hospital still alive and left in a body bag all the time. The potential of my mother to be one of those unfortunate people sent me into a panic and I burst into tears.

So it sucked to grow up unstable, like I had—walking into a room and they just stop the conversation, or not having enough room for my Clearasil thanks to all the medication—and so Mom and I were never close and our relationship didn't look like it would improve. But if she died, then that was absolutely it. The End, story time is over, last book in the series. There was a 100% guarantee that we would never come to any sort of understanding. We would never, ever, ever have any chance to develop the close mother-daughter bond that I'd wished for so much when I was little.

My phone rang. I wanted to send the busy tone, but when I looked and Henry's name flashed across the screen, I picked it up.

"Natalie, are you there?" Henry asked when I didn't offer any greeting.

I sniffed loudly as a yes, sitting up and looking around my room for a box of tissues.

"What's happening? I hope you're not doing anything impulsive."

"I'm fine," I said, sounding like I couldn't possibly be less fine. I removed some Kleenex from a box fallen off my desk and mopped up my face. I swallowed hard. "What do you mean 'impulsive?'"

"Nothing," Henry said quickly. "Will your mom be okay?"

That set me off again. "Henry," I wailed, a total mess, exactly what I usually strived not to be. I flopped down on the floor. "They want to give her shock therapy. I mean, _shock therapy._ Sending fucking bolts of electricity through her brain. It's so stupid. It's archaic. And it's not going to help her, she'll just come back a vegetable or something." I paused to catch my breath and blow my nose. I thought Henry may have tried to interject, but in my hysteria, I wasn't sure, I didn't hear.

"Nothing they do ever works," I continued. "They say, 'We're sure this cure will do the trick and change her,' but I've heard those lies before; they say that every time, and every time she just gets stranger. And I don't even know if she's going to be okay." I reiterated my thought from before. "Plenty of people get rushed to the hospital alive and leave in a body bag."

I didn't get any immediate response. Henry was probably waiting to see if my torrent of words had been exhausted. That, or he'd finally run away. (Not that I could ever blame him if he did that, because I'd been expecting it all along. It still, in the back of my mind, seemed inevitable, although I wanted him to stay.)

When the only sound was my sobbing, Henry finally spoke up: "Not that I'm making light of the whole thing, but have you considered that it might work?"

I pulled the phone away from my ear and looked at it, automatically thinking the connection was wonky and I'd misheard. "Um, no."

"Well then, tell me what will happen if it works."

"Henry."

"Humour me."

I rolled my eyes and sniffed some more before answering. "If it works… _if_ it works… then I'll be able to live my teenage years—my footloose days of running fast and free; you know, instead of fending for myself and picking up the pieces? And _if_ it works, then maybe we'll have a brand-new, happy home. Although I don't know what the hell happy families do."

"Well, I guess you'll find out."

" _Henry,_ " I sighed. "It's not going to work."

I couldn't stomach any more optimism all of a sudden. "Look, I'll talk to you later," I said.

"Natalie-"

"Bye, Henry."

I hung up and continued to lie on the floor. The fiasco of a piano recital mostly forgotten (although I was sure as hell going to be having another fit over it later), my head was a breeding ground for all the worst possible scenarios. I felt totally helpless and trapped, like the whole world would shatter if I tried to do anything. I briefly wondered if this was how my mom felt.

I rolled over onto my stomach and from there made myself vertical again. After the events of the day, and the incredible speed at which things had gone to hell in a handcart, I had no energy. My limbs felt like lead as I dragged myself over to my bed. But I didn't crawl under the covers and go to sleep. Instead, I reached underneath the furniture and tugged out something I hadn't in a while. How convenient that I could live like a wild teenager whilst blocking out all my problems.

The sight of the black tote bag, combined with the knowledge of what it contained, felt comforting somehow. At six, I didn't understand why anybody would take drugs or how on earth they could be helpful. At sixteen, I knew that you did whatever shit you had to do to drain the stupid pain out. For my mom, that was maintaining delusions; for my dad, it was trying to deny it all; for me, it was playing music too loudly to think, and now resorting to little bits of brain-chemistry altering substances.

I opened two bottles and shook out a capsule of each variety, washing them down with water. I figured I could get through this, somehow, if only there was a bit of illumination; the pills were a light in the dark.

 **Author's note:** And thus we finish Act One! Thank you for reading! The next chapter will, hopefully, be up sometime this coming week.


	12. Wish I Were Here, Part I

**Author's note:** This chapter was so hard to write! My aim was to make it a little choppy, but not hard to read; I also tried to take a bit of the eloquence out of the syntax. I hope it makes sense!

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own Next to Normal.

 **Chapter Twelve**

"Come on! This is my _favourite_ club! Let's go _in!_ " I tugged at Henry, who was trailing along behind me, too slowly for my liking, with his arms crossed and a stony look on his face (a look which I ignored).

"Isn't three clubs a little much for a Tuesday night"—he looked at the cheap watch he had on and corrected himself—"Wednesday morning?"

" _Come on!_ " I darted away, stumbling a bit, because my legs felt like Jell-O. I laughed, a wild, high-pitched noise that would have made me cringe, had I been sober. "They're playing my _favourite_ song!" (In truth, I had no idea what the song was, but I didn't detest what I was hearing, which was pretty much the same thing.)

Henry didn't budge. Instead, he let out a sigh. "They're all your favourite song." He sounded tired. He needed psychostimulants. They were totally working for me. "What are you on?"

 _Yeah, because I have a fucking clue._

"Adderall, Xanax, and… Valium… and Robitussin," I rattled off some names, complementing the list with frenzied hand motions and a grin that I thought exuded confidence.

It wasn't a lie, because I had definitely taken all that stuff at some point—just not necessarily together and not necessarily that night. All I remembered was that there was something purple. Who wanted to bother with details? Not me, not anymore. Details caused nothing but trouble. So I just grabbed a few tablets and washed them down without checking to see what I was actually ingesting. (When first I started recreational drugs, Henry instantly became worried I had a problem, but that was nothing compared to what I was doing now.)

"When did you become a bad influence on me?"

" _Hey,_ " I giggled, clumsily twirling around, "I am under _stress_. My _mom_ is in a _hospital_ being _electrocuted._ " I turned on my heels, limbs flailing, and skipped away.

Inside the building, the music was too loud and the lights were too bright, but that was nothing out of the ordinary. Whether that was the effects of the drugs or just how clubs operated, I didn't know.

I swiveled back around to look at Henry and raised my voice to be heard over the noise: " _Seriously!_ " Henry already knew all about it, but that didn't stop me from speaking as if I were telling him for the first time. "She gets it, like, _every_ _day_ for _two weeks!_ " Actually, it was less than two weeks at this point, but I didn't bother correcting myself. "I can't even _deal!"_ More laughter escaped from my lips. "I'd _never_ let them fuck with _my_ brain like that!"

Before delving into the crowd, I took a couple white pills from my pocket and chased them down with an energy drink. I thought I heard Henry yell something back, but I couldn't make out the words.

It was a little hard to believe how life was currently unfolding. Needless to say, Mom was alive and giving the shock therapy a whirl; she was almost halfway through her treatment at this point. As for me, I rarely had clear communication with reality. And thanks to going out to clubs every night, I was exhausted during the day, so I literally slept through most of my classes and didn't do so much as glance at my homework. My dad absolutely noticed, because my teachers kept calling, but he never confronted me about it. Not that we hadn't been speaking; on the contrary, we'd been arguing every day (but I guess my grades as of late was too big of a battle to handle). For example, when he had come home and announced that Mom signed the papers and was going in for the first round of ECT immediately, it was rousing match; on a separate occasion, we had a fight about my language, during which I informed him that he was a hypocrite and told him to shut the hell up about it (yeah, that went over really well); yet another argument was over the night of my recital and my mother's suicide attempt, yelling back and forth about what each of us could have done to prevent the outcome of the entire evening.

I finally managed to piece together what was going on back at home that day: My mom had an appointment with Dr. Madden, during which he managed to convince her that she needed to get on with her life and stop pining over her son. So, of course, the logical (not) way to proceed was to go through a box of baby Gabe's old stuff and get all weepy and depressed over it. My dad, who went to see if she needed help getting ready to go to the recital, found her next to a razor on the bathroom floor, lying in a pool of blood (how cliché). He called the ambulance, talked to the doctor, came home and cleaned up, then called me.

That was the first time I went to the clubs. I took the pills (I happened to take a combination that gave me abundant energy, which was a bonus), threw on leggings, a miniskirt, and a short-sleeved T-shirt (I was going to wear a tank top, but the frigid weather made me reconsider), and headed out once my dad was asleep. It was quite an experience. I hadn't meant to get Henry involved, but I called him at the end of the night, not sure where I was, and also freaked out by some creep who had cornered me and started shoving his tongue down my throat. I kneed him in the nuts and slipped away to beg Henry to come get me. "And _this_ is the kind of thing I meant by 'impulsive,'" he'd said when he arrived, referencing our earlier phone call. I started crying again, unable to fathom how I'd ended up in such a situation. But it wasn't enough to keep me away.

So here we were. Henry followed me around, trying to prevent me from getting in over my head (as if I wasn't already). I usually lost consciousness somewhere nearing four am, at which point, Henry decided it was time for us to leave; he got me off the floor and into the car. I sat in the passenger seat, flopped over with my head between my legs. There was a strained silence during the drive back to my house, except for when the drugs began to wear off and I was sobbing again, feeling like major shit all-around. Henry, I vaguely registered one night, never offered any verbal consolation. But he got me home, got me up to my bedroom and under the covers, and got me some water (all without my dad making an appearance, although I suspected he woke up and just decided to stay out of it).

It was clear to me that Henry disapproved of my antics, but he didn't understand. The things I was doing solved everything-or at least made my problems seem lesser-while I was doing them. I somehow felt everything and nothing at the same time. It was like euphoria and anger and biting winter wind and fire; and I knew I was feeling these things, but it was like I was detached from myself, not really present, and I couldn't fully experience these sensations. I was the light and heat of every sun, and I tried to enjoy it, but I seemed to be missing all the fun.

" _Wish I were here!" I exclaimed once to Henry._

 _All he did was raise an eyebrow._

" _I'm worlds away from who I was."_

 _That got a dry response: "Understatement of the year."_

What was perhaps the most important part of all this was how it killed everything I wanted but knew I wasn't going to get. I wanted my family to be a bit closer, I wanted my parents to pay attention to me, I wanted to leave this place; drugs killed my hunger for those and replaced it with the desire for more stimulation (more drugs, more lights, noise, crowds, whatever I could get—short of one-night stands, because despite shedding my previous inhibitions, I was absolutely not and never would be a slut). Unlike the other things, more stimulation was a want I could easily satisfy.

Sometimes I wondered if I still existed, usually when the pills' effects were at the highest. I wasn't sure if I actually was feeling what I thought I was feeling—the hope, the heat, the fear—or if I was just someone else's head trip and about to disappear.

 _Wish I were here:_ The phrase became my mantra, although I didn't necessarily believe it at all times. I liked the anonymity of clubs; I liked the burning sensation of things _happening_ , to me and around me; I didn't like the nagging awareness at the back of my head, the one that told me I was hurting Henry and myself and said I was being selfish not to stay home helping my dad cope and do my homework and be a good girl. I didn't wish I were here when that awareness was triggered into prominence, I didn't wish I were here when I was lying on cement and staring up at Henry's unreadable expression. I wished I could be totally present for the good things, but wished I could be less present for the pain. That was the trade-off, I guess.

And _wish I were here_ was stronger than _wish I weren't here,_ strong enough that I always reached for more.


	13. Wish I Were Here, Part II

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Next to Normal

 **Chapter Thirteen**

"Natalie! _Natalie!_ Damn."

I'd promised Henry that I wouldn't go out again, but I'd broken that promise: five times, to be exact. The escape of the drugs was too tempting, and it somehow didn't seem right to take a handful of pills and not go out and behave carelessly. The two had quickly become intertwined, and I couldn't have one without the other (not that I was attracted to clubs themselves, but I was attracted to the way clubs made me feel when I was high).

"This is like the fifth night in a row I've had to come find you at some random club."

I blinked only, semi-conscious. "Sorry," I said weakly. At this point, I wasn't sure if I meant it or not.

"I wish you wouldn't do this." Henry's voice was almost a growl as he pulled me upright and supported me as I stumbled over to his car, which was parked at the curb. He helped me into the passenger's seat and buckled the seat belt when it became obvious that I was too uncoordinated to do it myself.

It was much later than the usual pick-up time; the clock on the dashboard flashed "7:30 AM." (God only knows how long I'd been lying unconscious on the pavement for. Last I checked, it was only a bit after five.) My dad would have already left to pick my mom up from the hospital. She was getting out at eight. I didn't really know how to feel about it. On one hand, I wanted to hope the ECT worked, because, well, I wanted to have a real family. But on the other hand, I almost didn't want the treatment to work, because it would be weird to suddenly have a Mother, and there was just so much history to put aside. And I could never forget everything the Goodmans had been through, anyway.

I leaned my head against the cool glass of the window and closed my eyes. "Sorry," I mumbled again, definitely meaning it this time.

There was no acknowledgement of my apology, but I heard Henry sigh. "If you're going to be stupid," he said, "have your phone so you can tell me where you are."

I vaguely remembered Henry texting me over and over again, begging me to stay home and go to bed, and I vaguely remembered that I had taken some drugs and headed out, conveniently leaving my phone behind.

Indignation flared up in me. "You're not my dad," I protested, eyes still closed.

"But I am someone who cares about you."

"You don't have to."

No response.

I opened my eyes a bit and squinted through them, studying Henry. He had bags under his eyes and his mouth was set in a tight line and his hands were tightly gripping the steering wheel. I suddenly felt terrible, because that was my fault. If I weren't courting clubs and drugs and rough neighbourhoods every night, he wouldn't be so worried and exhausted. Sure, if he hadn't been with me or come and found me, I probably would have been raped or mugged or accidentally wandered into incoming traffic, but he could have actually been having a life if he just let me be, or if I hadn't gotten into this in the first place.

I wondered why he stayed. Certainly, I wasn't worth all the trouble. I opened my mouth, about to ask him, when he announced, "We're here. Get out."

I looked up. Sure enough, his car was parked in front of my house. The seat belt retracted itself with a click when I pushed the button. Henry got out and opened the door for me after watching me fumble with the handle.

"My dad isn't home," I said, not completely randomly, as we walked up the stairs to the front porch.

I thought I heard Henry mutter under his breath, "Good. You'd be in big trouble."

When we got inside (I passed the key to Henry—my house key was the only thing I'd remembered to take with me the previous night—and he let us in), Henry directed me into the kitchen, where I immediately sat down on the floor as he ran the tap and filled a glass.

I downed the water in one swoop, then met his eyes. "Okay," I said, feeling relatively revived by the liquid, "you can go. I'm like… seventy percent less messed up now."

All Henry did was stare at me.

"Seriously! My dad's going to be home any minute. He's bringing my mom from the hospital this morning, and trust me, you don't want to be here."

"Will you call me?"

I set the glass down beside me, looking away. "Just go." I knew I wasn't going to call him.

There was a pause before Henry got up and made his leave, slamming the front door a bit, obviously frustrated.

After placing the water glass on the counter, I dragged myself up the stairs and into my room. I changed my clothes and brushed my hair, trying to look like I hadn't been out all night. With my mom coming home, I knew I had to hide my stupid hunger (my new hunger was for drugs, not acceptance into Yale or my parents' adoration) and fake some confidence and cheer. How on earth I'd pull that one off was beyond me, but I didn't have an option.

I briefly collapsed, but didn't have much time to rest before I heard my parents enter the house and my father's voice calling to me.

I squeezed my eyes shut and blinked them open wide, trying to look more alive than I felt, before peeling myself up from the bed and hurrying downstairs.

"Hey," I said, a bit out of breath. "Wow. Uh, you look… great." I flashed a weak smile to accompany the compliment.

My mother gave me a strange look, one part vacant, two parts confused. "Oh, well," she said uncertainly, "thank you." There was a beat while my dad and I looked at her expectantly, and then she asked, "And who are you?"

" _Who_ am I?" I echoed slowly. The question would have made more sense if the letters had been rearranged, if it had been _how_ was I.

"Diana," Dad intervened. "This is Natalie."

"You _daughter?_ "

The look on Mom's face could only be interpreted as shock, which she promptly tried to disguise. "Oh, of course. And… this is our house?"

 _Oh my god._ It felt like all the air had been punched out of me.

"Diana," Dad said again. "Don't you- you don't… remember any of this?"

My mom took a few steps deeper into the hallway, looked around, and shook her head. "I should, right?" She turned so her back was to me and her eyes were on her husband, whom she apparently didn't know she was married to.

"This house and all these rooms?" Dad prompted. "Last Christmas, last year? Out back, the dogwood blooms-"

"Do I really live here?" came the whispered interjection.

 _No. No no no no no._ This wasn't happening. This couldn't be happening.

"The paint, the walls, all this glass and wood… you don't recall?"

"I wish I could."

Dad tried to jog earlier memories: "Our house on Walton Way, the house with the red door?"—he failed to mention that the house had burned to a crisp, no thanks to her—"Our trip to Saint-Tropez; the whole week of downpour?"

My turn: "My first few steps and my first lost tooth?" I attempted.

My mother looked back at me, frowning.

"What, nothing yet?" I asked, although I already knew that she really didn't have a fucking clue who I was. I was just some tired-looking teenage girl who didn't seem to be happy to be here. I could have been anybody—homeless person, heir to the throne, drug addict (actually, that one wasn't far from the truth), and she wouldn't have known the difference.

"To tell the truth…." Mom said quietly, trailing off and not tacking on the implied "no."

"Jesus." Now I was the one who moved away, stepping into the living room entrance and gripping the side of the wall with one hand. The other hand went to my forehead as my dad spoke softly to my mom.

It was literally my worst nightmare come true. I didn't think it would ever be real; it was _beyond_ a worst-case scenario. Worst-case scenarios never actually happened, and Mom not even remembering me was purely impossible—or so I'd thought. It crossed my mind to wonder if she remembered her son, but I shut that thought down pretty quickly.

"The day our child was born, our baby girl's first cry?" My dad's words brought me out of my head, but I didn't turn around. "That grey and drizzly morning… I've never felt so high."

 _Except when_ he _was born, I bet._

"The day we met," my mother spoke suddenly, "and we shared two beers."

"Then?"

"I-I forget."

"But that's… nineteen years." My dad's voice was coloured with disbelief. I completely agreed.

"That Doctor Mitchell said there might be some memory loss," Mom tried to point out.

Dad sighed. "Doctor Madden."

A pause. Then, "Well, see, there you go."

I scoffed. We had paid how much money for this shock therapy bullshit? We'd wasted all this time on a treatment that just incapacitated her long-term memory?

"What a lovely cure!" I spat sarcastically, reeling back around to confront my father. "It's a medical miracle! With a mind so pure that she doesn't know _anything_."

"It's there, I'm sure"—forever the King of Denial—"memories don't just die."

"They die!" I gave my dad a look that shot daggers.

"They don't die!" Dad was suddenly yelling.

"I'll try," Mom chimed in, looking upset, probably both because of the fact she'd lost nearly two decades of her life, and because there was so much tension between the other two parties in the room.

My dad's entire body visibly relaxed, the fight going out of him as he turned back to address his memory-impaired wife. There were, evidently, much more important things to do than quarrel with me.

 _Plenty of time for that later,_ I thought. I ran my fingers through my hair and went back upstairs to catch up on sleep. Nobody stopped me. As I retreated, I heard my dad talking about memories that go unremembered and blahblahblah.

I shut my door, locking it, and got into bed fully clothed. Hopefully my sleep was dreamless, or at the very least, my dreams weren't as fucked up and horrific as my reality was.

"Wish I were here," I said to myself, bitterly, before shutting my eyes.

Or weren't. That would be fine, too.


	14. Hey, Part I

**Author's note:** A short chapter, because I'm pulling an all-nighter and currently have the time. Hope you enjoy!

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own Next to Normal.

 **Chapter Fourteen**

I began avoiding Henry to remarkable effect; I couldn't stand to see the concern and disgust and anger and hurt on his face, and I couldn't stand that it was all my fault. The guilt was practically killing me, so, naturally, I popped a few pills—just to take the edge off. (Honestly, I was not taking nearly as many now that Mom was home, and I wasn't going out to clubs every night either. Part of that was because I knew I'd go overboard and pass out and I might just freeze to death or get mauled or something, because Henry wouldn't be there to save me.)

Anything to do with piano had not so much as been glanced at since that stupid recital. That was something else I couldn't face: the keyboard. Though the talk about my breakdown had spread around the school, it wasn't long before another drama took centre stage and whispers stopped following me down hallways. Still, I was self-conscious—embarrassed, even—to be seen going into a practice room, and even more self-conscious to be heard playing. I was only going to fuck up, so why bother? Save further humiliation for another day.

Although I myself wasn't playing, I spent a fair bit of time lingering in corridors, listening to a certain someone else play. He really was good. I thought that he should try applying for music somewhere. Surely there were jazz programs, and someone would absolutely want him ( _Unlike me._ But I shut down that thought). There were a few times he started playing something classical—why, I don't know. Maybe it had grown on him, or maybe because that was closest to talking to me, or maybe just for the hell of it—and while he was also quite good at that, I didn't stay. Mozart was too painful to hear; I couldn't hear the composer's doubts or disease, but mine were loud and clear.

Back at home, Mom didn't seem to be improving much. She was learning a lot, but that wasn't the same thing; I got the impression that she was just taking everything we told her and memorizing it. If there was any silver lining, it was that she showed no signs of remembering Gabe. Part of me didn't think it was fair to keep such a big component of her life from her, but I couldn't say I didn't like that she now spoke to me without a single thought of _him_ to distract her. (Needless to say, she also wasn't hallucinating him anymore.)

Henry managed to catch me one day, cornering me between third and fourth period.

"Hey," he said.

I considered dodging around him, but decided that would be far too rude to do without acknowledging him. "Hey."

Henry looked somewhat bolstered by the fact I wasn't pushing past him (yet). "I've missed you these days. I thought you might call. It's been _weeks_."

"That's an exaggeration," I corrected automatically with an eye roll. "It's only been one and five-sevenths weeks. And I've been crazed."

"Hey." Henry grabbed my arm to stop me when I tried to walk away. "Have you been on the scene? 'Cause you look like a mess."

I pictured myself in my mind's eye and had to agree. Rumpled jeans; baggy sweater that didn't hide my too-thin frame; hair uncombed; dark circles the size of dinner plates. Not that I was usually the queen of put-together, but neither did I typically look so… shleppy.

Pulling away from his grasp, all I said was, "Thanks, I guess."

"Are you clean?"

That provoked one of my trademark, humourless laughs. "Wow," I said, "coming from you?"

Henry shook his head. "I don't do what you do," he answered with a scowl.

I matched his expression. I was tired and anxious and in the mood to point fingers. "Okay, how did it start?" I felt my nose begin to tingle and the inner corners of my eyes get hot, but I refused to cry.

"But you took it too far."

"Oh, I 'took it too far,'" I echoed with a bit of condescension in my voice.

"Hey, hey…."

I threw up my hands and shook my head vehemently back and forth. "Henry, don't, don't do this to me!

"Are we over?" Now Henry looked at me pleadingly. "Don't say that we're over."

That got my attention. "Don't you want us to be?" I demanded. I would have thought he'd be jumping for joy at the prospect.

"No," he said, "I want who I knew. She's somewhere in you."

I opened my mouth to reply, then shut it again and turned to leave. I didn't know what there was to say to that.

"Hey. _Hey_."

I stopped.

"Will you come to this dance?" Henry reached into his bag and removed a fluorescent orange pamphlet. "It's some spring formal dance."

I turned and stared at the flyer he held out to me. Although I didn't take it or say anything, my mind immediately flashed to the pretty, unworn blue dress at the back of my closet.

"It's March first," Henry continued, "and it's cheese, but it's fun and it's free."

The offer held a lot of temptation, but ultimately, there were too many unknown variables, and school dances were not my thing anyway.

"I don't do dances." I shook my head again, with less vigour than before.

"Do this dance with me?" Henry stepped closer, still offering the stoplight-coloured flyer.

"Goodbye, Henry." I hurried away without looking back, trying to forget the image of his hopeful expression falling and trying to ignore the new layer of guilt that I felt.


	15. Better Than Before?

**Author's note:** The italicized section is a memory, if it wasn't clear.

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own Next to Normal.

 **Chapter Fifteen**

I couldn't put the dance out of my mind, although not for lack of trying. One day, after school, I went to my closet and sifted through the hangers until I found the blue dress. I pulled it out and regarded it, taking in the flared skirt, the spaghetti straps, and the gauzy fabric that made the dress appear more silver than blue in some lighting. It really was a beautiful dress, and on top of that, it was so fresh- and crisp-looking—the price tag was even still attached. It would be such a waste not to wear it to something….

 _No,_ I told myself. If I went to the dance and pretended that things were normal between me and Henry, it would be like lying; I was fairly certain I'd done some irreparable damage, that my shameful behaviour had permanently changed how Henry viewed me (and how I viewed him, because there were times I got fed up with his parental hovering). If I went to the dance and acknowledged that things had changed between us, then the whole night would be too uncomfortable to bear. Either way, there was no winning. It was simply a bad idea.

But still, I went to the mirror and held the dress up to my body, imagining what it'd be like to slip it on and do my hair and put on some makeup and arrive at the school. 99.9% of the student body wouldn't notice me at all, but Henry would. Henry would see me and smile, maybe giggle and make a dumb joke if he were stoned, and we'd join the throng of high schoolers who were dancing to cheesy music. And-

 _Okay, no, stop,_ I thought again, more firmly this time. I wasn't going to get carried away by a daydream. Daydreams were only harmless until you realized that they were never going to come true.

Luckily for me, my reverie got put on certain hold by my dad calling.

"We're going to work on your mother's memory. Come join us!"

I returned the dress to the closet and pounded my way downstairs, my footsteps a bit heavier than necessary to express my annoyance. Because there had been no real improvement in Mom's recollections, Dad had taken her back to the doctor to complain. Dr. Madden said to give it time, but to assist by showing her family paraphernalia and photographs. (Finally, Dad's obsessive picture-taking was going to come in useful. Perhaps.) When Dad told me about this, I asked him what we were supposed to do regarding the dead boy (I got an irritated look for my choice of words, but he let it go). Apparently, "We should bring it up eventually, but be careful not to rush her into anything that may distress her." In my opinion, avoiding anything distressing vastly narrowed the pool of available memories to consider, so the entire exercise was therefore a pile of crap. But what did I know?

My parents were situated at the dining room table. There were photo albums and loose photographs and boxes of stuff laid in front of my mother, who was seated. My dad stood beside her. They both smiled when I joined them—Mom also looking a bit apprehensive—and I scowled in response. I leaned against the wall with my arms crossed instead of sitting down.

"Okay, let's start with something small," Dad said, "something personal and pretty. I bet you know these shiny things." A couple gold bands sat in his cupped hand.

"They must be"—Mom picked one up and examined it—"tacky trinkets from, I guess… Atlantic City?"

My eyebrows shot up and my mouth opened in a sarcastic smile.

Dad, on the other hand, didn't seem phased. "No, actually, Di, they're our wedding rings."

"It's going well," I snickered. My commentary was ignored.

"Here's a flower from our wedding," Dad continued after sliding my mom's ring onto her finger and donning his own, "it was such a sight to see. The ceremony was everything we hoped."

"Um, Dad?" He made it sound like a romantic event. In truth, Mom got pregnant, so they went and got married like a week later in another city. Dad bought her some carnations. They signed the paperwork. And then they came back home and told the their parents.

"Well that's how I remember it, so that's how it'll be," Dad retorted.

To get the bare facts laid down, I said, "It was raining, it was Portland, you eloped. And I mean… _Portland?_ " Of all the places to pick.

"It's an open book to write." Dad threw his arms out to the sides to emphasize how open the book was. "It's a life we can restore. We can get back what we had and maybe more."

I raised an eyebrow and glanced at my mom. She was looking back and forth between the two of us with an uncertain expression on her face (probably not sure which of us was more a more reliable source of information). She seemed so lost that I figured we could only get back a fraction of what we had before; and what we had before wasn't so great, so why the hell would we want it back anyway?

Mostly out of my own curiosity, I went over to the table and started shuffling through photographs. The tree swing in the backyard of our Walton Way house, me at my first piano recital, my dad and I playing with coloured blocks, my first Christmas, my Dad holding an infant me with an ecstatic look on his face: Pictures I hadn't seen in god knows how long, but nothing from before I was born.

"You're missing a few pictures here, aren't you, Dad?" I asked pointedly. "Didn't the doctor say-"

"The doctor said," he interrupted sternly, "at the right time."

"Oh. Well then." When did anything the doctor said ever do us any good? Besides, knowing my dad, he would judge the "right time" to be never.

I pulled out a chair and sat down, slouching back and re-crossing my arms.

"Here's the year we drove the West: We hit the highway in the Honda, and I took pictures everywhere we went. We saw the painted desert, the Grand Canyon, and Aunt Rhonda, and Nat learned what her middle finger meant."

I rolled my eyes. That trip wasn't so great. There was a really bad heatwave, we almost hit a coyote and there was a lot of screaming, I had a bad case of motion sickness, and Aunt Rhonda is nearly as crazy as my mom.

"Here's the first house that we owned, on Walton Way, we loved that place."—I waited to see if he was going to tell her why we moved—"Then we built this one on land that we both chose."—Nope—"And here's a pic of all of us with smiles on every face, and the Photoshopping hardly even shows."

I rolled my eyes. Here he was, trying to paint us as this idyllic family who goes on road trips and enjoys each others' company, and yet he was telling her that we had to Photoshop pleasant expressions on our faces? Well that was a bit counterproductive. I remembered what the original picture looked like: I was giving the camera a sulky glare, Dad was trying and failing to look happy, and Mom had her head turned to one side, grinning at nothing (she thought she was looking at Gabe). It wasn't a good day.

"We're standing by a lake with all these ducks." I looked up, my attention grabbed by my mother's voice. "And who's this little chubby girl?"

 _I was not chubby!_

"That's Natalie."

I was already getting up and walking away. "This sucks."

"Nat." Dad caught my arm before I could disappear from sight. "We're gonna get us back to normal; we're gonna get us back to good times and forget the things we should. We _can_ get things back to better than before."

Normal was not a state that existed for us, but: "All right. Fine."

I returned to the table and pulled out a stack of unorganized photos. It didn't take me long to find the ones I wanted.

"Here's the headline in the paper when you freaked out at the market," I said, handing the images one by one to my mother, "Here's the house on Walton Way after the fire."

" _Natalie!"_ My dad wasn't pleased with me. Too bad.

I held up a hand to signal "stop." I wasn't done yet. "Here's the damage to the Honda when you showed me how to park it."

There was a silence as Mom frowned at the scene depicted in front of her. "Did we crush somebody's cat beneath the tire?" she asked finally.

The cat-crushing incident and the parallel-parking incident hadn't happened at the same time, but close enough. "Yes," I said. "Ours."

I'd loved that cat. I was devastated that I accidentally ran his skull over with the car. It took me months before I would get behind the wheel again.

"Here's Dad at my recital and we're wondering where you are."

" _While we're waiting, take a picture of me."_

 _I gave him an incredulous look. "Why?"_

" _I want to remember this," Dad said, sounding mildly defensive._

" _You want to remember that Mom was late for my recital?"_

" _Why not?"_

 _I conceded, thinking that he was totally weird, but not deeming it important enough to fight about._

"I remember this!" Mom exclaimed. "I made it to the school."

"Wait," Dad said, "you remember?"

She nodded. "It was the year of too much lithium"—it was actually the second year, but again, close enough—"and I hid out in the car." She looked at the next picture in my hands and took it from me. "And this was your swim meet, just last year—I'm in the pool."

While she sounded delighted about this, I didn't recall the event with such fondness. "So you are," I said dryly.

"You're getting it!" Dad was practically shouting in his excitement. "You've got it, Di! Hooray!"

Mom smiled at Dad before turning and gesturing to me. "Your life has kind of sucked, I think."

More cause for humourless laughter. "You've got it. Yay," I added to mock my dad, "hooray!"

I walked away from the table and flopped down in one of the living room chairs, still facing the dining room. My parents were chattering and pawing through old items, energy spiking thanks to the initial breakthrough. Of course, the breakthrough had only happened when I started bringing up bad memories, but whatever works, eh?

They went on like that until my mom pulled out a music box. Although she probably didn't know, it was Gabe's music box. (I'd once heard her reminiscing with her imaginary son, "Your father and I played this all the time when you were a baby. Sometimes it helped you sleep.") As soon as my dad saw the keepsake in my mother's hands, he took it from her and put it back, dropping it in its container as though it were on fire.

"It's going to be dinner time soon," he said loudly, panicked. "We should start packing up."

His first order of business was to remove the bin holding the music box and, I assumed, other things that might remind Mom of Gabe. Mom looked confused, but she didn't protest. I continued to watch my parents, the frenzied movement of my dad and the slower, bemused movement of my mom.

I sighed. She might not have been able to recall any of the traumatic happenings in her life, but it was only a matter of time, and our family was still totally fucked up.


	16. Hey, Part II

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Next to Normal.

 **Chapter Sixteen**

"Natalie." My mom looked up at the sound of my footsteps. She was sitting on the living room floor surrounded by photographs. Although there was a reading lamp turned on, it stood behind her, and her face remained shadowed from my perspective.

"Just getting some water, Mom," I said softly, continuing to the kitchen.

It was half past eleven. My mother had been staying up late every night, trying to fully restore her memory. She could recall what had happened during the past five or so years, but everything before that was spotty. To my dad's alarm, she kept reiterating that she felt there was "something missing—something important." While I always laughed and quipped, "Besides fourteen years?" I wasn't volunteering to be the bringer of bad news. Dad, of course, had no intention of revealing the big family secret (ever), so Mom was still in the dark about Gabe, although her subconscious seemed to be whispering about him.

I refilled the water bottle that lived near my bed and crept back upstairs. The worst of Mom's bipolar drama seemed to be over for the time being, so I was shifting my focus to salvaging my grades. I most certainly wouldn't be graduating early and going to an ivy league university—my "get out of jail free" card had expired—but if I could pull my average back up to the nineties, or at least the mid-eighties, that'd be ideal.

Too bad everything seemed really, really hard now. Not that calculus was a breeze before, but now my brain hurt after two minutes of staring at a textbook. Maybe my brain was half-dead from all the chemicals I'd subjected it to, or maybe I was still in fight/flight mode, waiting for the shit to hit the fan again, unable to do anything other than listen for signs of danger. But I stubbornly pressed on, even though my eyes glazed over and I found myself reading the same paragraph over and over again.

I could hear muffled activity happening downstairs. I rubbed my eyes and then pressed my hands over my ears, trying to at least pretend that my attention was dedicated to differential calculus. Timid knocking on my bedroom door thwarted my efforts.

"What?" I half-sighed the question.

The door opened and Henry appeared. "Hey."

 _Yes, because you are just what I need right now._

"Hey. It's late. If you hadn't noticed." I wondered if he could tell how out of it I was.

"Yeah, I know." The way he said it reminded me of our first interaction and how it drove me nuts that he kept starting his sentences with "yeah," a speech pattern I'd mostly adjusted to. "You weren't answering your phone."

"It's out of battery," I said lamely.

"I've been texting and calling since like four."

"It's been out of battery all evening."

Henry opened his mouth, then shook his head slightly, realizing that the conversation was going absolutely nowhere. He changed the subject: "So tomorrow's the dance."

I had been sitting turned sideways in my chair, towards the door, with an elbow propped on my desk and supporting my head, which tilted sideways. At his words, I turned back and pulled the chair in a bit, making it clear that I wasn't interested. The discussion was closed.

"I know it's annoying, but let's go."

Now I was the one to shake my head. "Not a chance," I said over my shoulder.

"Let me know you again."

"Not right now."

"Okay, when? Say wait and I'll wait."

 _Damn Henry for making everything so hard!_

"It's already too late, I can't-"

"There's no way it's too late, there's no way…" he continued to ramble.

I stood up and faced him, fighting to keep my voice from rising as I tried to cut him off. "Hey. Hey! Will you listen? Just shut up and listen!"

That did the trick. He stopped and gave me a wounded look. "Why do I get denied?" He asked.

I took a deep breath before telling him, "You remind me of me and how fucked up I can be."

Certain that that statement would make him leave, I was surprised when he didn't. It felt like an eternity that we stared at each other. I couldn't tell what he was thinking, or if he was thinking anything at all.

"Okay," he said at last. "Let's start over—clean slate. I'll come by here at eight; if you show, then we'll go. And if not, then… we'll see."

"You just don't give up." Another remark that reminded me of our first exchange.

"So don't give up on me."

For some reason, that response hit hard. I didn't think I was giving up on him, I was just trying to protect us both. Or was that the same thing?

"Goodbye. Henry." I tagged his name onto the end, almost as an afterthought.

This time, he took a hint and left, shutting the door behind him. I waited until I was sure he was out of the house before going to the closet.

I didn't look too bad in the blue dress.


	17. Promises

**Author's note:** Oh man, I'm so sorry for the mega delay in updates. Writer's block hit me hard, and I must admit that writing this chapter felt a bit like when you're hitting yourself over the head trying to meet the word count for an essay. But we got there, even if some of it is a little awkward. Apologies again! Hopefully the next one won't be so slow coming.

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own Next to Normal.

 **Chapter Seventeen**

It was early Saturday evening—the first of March. Despite all the reasons I should not go and all the rejections I had given Henry, I was planning to be ready and waiting at eight o'clock. I had informed my parents that morning:

" _So," I broke the uncomfortable silence with a brilliant conversation-starter, "there's a dance at the school tonight."_

 _Although I remained focused on my corn flakes, I saw out of my periphery the surprised looks that my statement induced._

" _Are you, uh, going?" Dad asked, folding the newspaper he'd been pretending to read. (What he was actually doing was stealing glances at Mom, who'd been staring hazy-eyed at the table, letting her toast go cold, lost in thought.)_

" _Henry asked me. I have a nice dress. It's blue," I added, now addressing my mother. "You got it for me a while ago."_

" _Oh, yes," my mom said vaguely, nodding slightly. She clearly didn't remember it, but I couldn't blame her; I figured she'd bought it during a manic shopping expedition, and there had been several of those, all following the same plot and pretty much indistinguishable from each other._

" _Well," Dad said after a small pause, "stay safe if you and Henry decide to—"_

" _Dad," I interrupted. That was not a conversation I wanted to have. Not with my father and not breakfast time. "It's just some lame high school gathering of the mindless masses. It's not like we're getting a hotel room afterwards; I'm coming right home. And I am not interested in repeating history tonight."_

Then I'd given him a pointed look, which shut him up.

While there was a certain amount of snark to my words, there was also a lot of truth. I didn't want to be anything like my parents: I didn't want to be crazy like my mom or emotionally impaired like my dad (actually, their marriage was rather bipolar itself, with her flying into hysteria and him denying having feelings. But I digress), and I didn't want to have kids young (or maybe at all), and I didn't want to turn into a kind-of-average, middle-age person whose primary goal in life was just surviving, who looked back and thought about all the time that could have been put to better use. Following in my parents' footsteps was not in the cards, not if I had anything to say about it.

Besides, who knew how the night would go down? There were a million possible scenarios, and I'd spent the entire day imagining each one in great detail. Most of them ranged from awkward to devastating, but there were a few pleasant ones. Part of me wondered if, provided this dance was successful, we could go to prom together. Social events like that were never something I gave much though to—they all had this artificial "look, we're having fun (but not really)" quality—but with Henry… maybe. He managed to get away with saying and doing cheesy and clichéd things.

I checked my hair and makeup for the millionth time. I wanted to look perfect, or at least a million times better than I had been as of late. My hair was conditioned and brushed and half pulled back, and I'd spent a great deal of time on winged eyeliner (which, although nice, was a bitch and I intended to never do it again). Mascara, a soft pink lipstick, a touch of blush, and I was good to go. The dress, of course, was as lovely as it always was. And I liked the way I looked in the whole ensemble. Part of me wanted my dad to get out his camera and take a photo; one happy photo amidst the unhappy ones that probably deserved to be burned.

It was almost eight, and there were no messages on my phone from Henry, but I wasn't concerned, given that I was the one more likely to be a no-show. At that moment, what really worried me was the raised voices from the living room. I didn't want to get dragged into one of my parents' dramas—not to night—but I also didn't want to hide in my room and lose Henry for good. (If I made an excuse, it wouldn't matter what it was; it was still an excuse.) So I pulled on my coat (I didn't want to display the dress until we were at the school) and opened my bedroom door.

The words became clear as soon as I stepped out into the upstairs hallway.

"Tell me!"

"It's gonna be fine. We'll go back to the doctor, 'cause we caught it just in time."

"What was his name?"

 _Oh god._

"We'll take the pills and pay the bills. We'll do more ECT."

"Our son! What was his name?!"

I crept down the stairs until I could see what was happening, then went just a little further. (What a case of déjà vu.) My father was gripping my mother's shoulders, bending down a little to look her directly in the eyes; my mother was gripping that music box, that troublesome music box, her focus bouncing around like a ping-pong ball.

"It'll all be good, you'll see."

Her voice suddenly dropped. _"What. Was. His. Name."_

Whatever feelings this abrupt shift triggered in my dad, he evidently decided that the best solution was to take away the music box. I frowned, already knowing that this wasn't going to end well. A knock at the front door briefly distracted me from the struggle between my parents, but then Dad finally wrenched the smooth wooden box out of Mom's hands and threw it. Henry, with brilliant timing as always, chose this moment to let himself in. The sound of the door being shut was lost in the shattering of the music box as it hit the wall and landed, broken, at the foot of the stairs.

There was a short, stunned silence before I exclaimed, _"Jesus, Dad!"_

He looked up. His face froze as he tried to figure out how much I'd seen. "Natalie."

I shook my head and ran back upstairs. Forget insane asylums, the Goodman family home was a madhouse. Sure, I'd lived through a plethora of fights, but nothing that ended so dramatically. And nothing that ended with a second witness on hand.

"Natalie." This time it was Henry who said my name. He was fast enough to catch the door, which I'd shoved upon entering my room, before it could swing shut.

" _Why?"_ I whirled around and shrieked at him. "Why do you stay for day after _fucking_ day?"

"Nat-"

"Why not simply end it? We'd all comprehend it, and most of the world would say, 'He's better off that way, to be free; and maybe so is she!'"

There it was. The thing I always wanted to ask, but never had. I'd several times come within a hair of it, but the words always got shoved away, either by my own backing down or some other interference. Now that the question was on the table, I was almost dreading the answer. Maybe Henry didn't have a good reason, or maybe he found my fucked up life entertaining, or maybe he just pitied me and stayed out of some sense of obligation. The last was by far the worst possibility, because I didn't want to be a charity case.

Henry, though understandably looking disoriented from the scene he'd walked in on, barely missed a beat. "Because I know that whatever may come, we'll come through," he said (with more conviction than I would have had in his shoes). "And who can know how, when all I know now to be true is the promise that I made to you."

I bit my lip, anger and sadness bubbling in me. So I was just a charity case.

 _Perfect for you. Until I'm not._ The promise was that he'd be perfect for me, not that I had to be perfect for him, but it still seemed like a failing on my part.

"So here's what I say to the girl who was burning so brightly, like the light form Orion above: I will search for her nightly—if you see her, please send her my love. I know one day we'll remember that joy; you'll remember that girl, I'll remember that boy." He stepped closer to me and unconsciously mirrored the position I'd found my parents in, his hands resting on my shoulders. "And I'll never regret, or let you. I'll make the promise I made brand new."

I was not typically big on sentiment, but I softened as he spoke. He was obviously sincere. When he pulled me into a hug, I didn't push him away, and I actually hugged him back. I hadn't let myself be defenseless in a long time, and I could feel every muscle in my body relax.

"About that dance," Henry said into my hair.

"You're obsessed," I muttered, although not too grudgingly.

"Just obsessed with you."

That made me laugh, partly because of how upfront it was in comparison with the flowery monologue he'd just given.

Henry started to respond, but I pulled away, tense again, listening for another call of what I thought had been my name.

" _Natalie!"_

"Shit. It is her." I'd almost forgotten about my parents, feeling safe in my bubble with Henry.

I met her in the doorframe and she began talking at me. Her eyes darted from my face to around the room and back again. "Gabe … your father … the doctor." Her words were a mess, but what I managed to get the gist of it and what she wanted.

"Okay, Mom, okay," I said, trying to make her shut up. Her frantic energy and proximity were making me feel claustrophobic. "I'll be right there."

"Nat?" Henry questioned as my mother hurried off.

"I can't go to your _stupid_ dance," I said as I rifled through my wallet, making sure I had my driver's license. The wallet went back into the purse I'd prepared, and the whole thing went into my backpack. I probably didn't need my backpack, but there was something calming about its presence. "I have to take my mom to the doctor."

"I'll drive," Henry offered immediately.

"No!" I shot back, equally prompt, as I left the room.

"Let me help!"

"You can't." The last thing I wanted was to have Henry beside me in the psychiatrist's waiting room. I preferred to keep my life with him and my issues with my family as separate as possible. "Just… go, and I'll try to come later."

"I'll wait for you there."

I heard my dad yell after me as I followed my mom (who was waiting impatiently at the door) out of the house, but as usual, I ignored him.

As we got into the car, I let out a forceful sigh. Welcome to my life: A crisis is just around the corner.


	18. Something Next to Normal

**Author's note:** Ahhh, we're approaching the end! There will probably be three more chapters ("Hey #3/Perfect for You," "Light," and an epilogue). I don't know what I'm going to obsess over when I'm done this. Maybe I'll think of something else to write.

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own Next to Normal.

 **Chapter Eighteen**

I had tried waiting inside, but the fluorescent lights were too bright and gave me a headache. On top of that, I couldn't stop myself from pacing, and the pitying looks from the receptionist were starting to wear on me. So I took my anxious self outside, where the parking lot was nearly empty and thus the perfect, private place for neurotic fidgeting. Henry had texted me a few times, asking how things were, trying to be positive, and asking how I was. I'd sent him a terse "no" in response. He hadn't texted since, and I didn't know whether to be relieved or wish he would.

The events of the night had mostly sunk in, and they didn't leave me feeling warm and fuzzy. I wished more than ever that I could fly, run away, disappear. Part of me actually did want to stay—because I hated to think what a state my family would be in if I weren't there to help trim the loose ends—but for my own sanity (or what was left of it), I desperately needed to go. My parents and I were stuck on a hamster wheel, going around and around, pretending that everything was okay; it was very wearing, all that running in one place and never going anywhere. I was beginning to realize that maintaining a façade of normality was pointless, because this "normal" they sold us was no special deal. "Normal" was more complicated than that, maybe even nonexistent. It was such a waste of time to play along, and the cycle would never end if something didn't change.

"Natalie."

I stopped pacing and looked up. My mom was making her way towards me. In the dim light, I could see that her shoulders were down and relaxed, and her hands were tucked comfortably away in her pockets.

"So what did he say?" I asked when she was closer.

"He said I could do more ECT or go back on the meds." She was much calmer than she had been in a long time.

Since she didn't give me any further information, I prompted, "And what are you going to do?"

There was a silence, during which her eyes never left my face. "I'm going to take you to your dance," she said finally.

"Mom," I sighed, closing my eyes briefly and furrowing my brow. "That's not-"

She cut me off: "It's time for you to start thinking about your own happiness."

"It's not happiness; it's Henry." My voice had wistful undertones, and I felt my expression loosen somewhat. It barely registered that I had basically just used "happiness" and "Henry" as synonyms.

"You love him."

" _Mom._ " Shaking my head, I brought my focus back to the issue at hand. "You can't just walk out on your doctor."

My mother took a deep breath. "Maybe I've lost it at last," she said with a nearly-imperceptible shrug. "Maybe my last lucid moment has passed. I suppose I'm dancing with death, but really, who knows?" There was a slight hesitation before she went on, "Could be I'm crazy to go. They say you should stay with the devil you know, but… when life needs a change and the one devil won't, you fight to the devil you don't."

"So what? You're just going to wing it?" Though I'd just been thinking that something needed to change, this was not the kind of change I'd had in mind. These were not answers that I wanted to hear.

"Maybe I'm tired of the game." Something made my mom's eyes light up. "Maybe I'm tired of coming up short of the rules and the same. And maybe you feel that way, too."

My frown deepened as I tried to work out the subtext of her words.

"I see me in you."

My reaction was instant: I held up a hand in a "stop" motion and turned away sharply, then crossed my arms, gluing them solidly to my torso in a stiff, defensive pose. My mother tried to touch my shoulder, but I stepped away.

"A girl full of anger and hope," she attempted to explain herself, as if I wanted to know why she thought we were alike, "a girl with a mother who just couldn't cope. A girl who felt caught and thought that no one could see, but maybe one day she'll be free."

"It's so lovely that you're sharing," I blurted crossly, whirling back around. "No really, I'm all ears; thank you so much for caring to save me some tears. But where has all this been for sixteen years?"

I waited for a defense from the opposite party, but all I got was a sad look, so I continued: "I always prayed that you'd go away for good—half the time, afraid you really would." I looked away briefly, anger subsiding. "When I thought you might be dying, I cried for all we'd never be. But there'll be no more crying, not for me."

"Things will get better, you'll see."

"Not for me," I repeated. The words took on a different meaning when used in response to my mother's sentence. The irony was that I found myself fighting to hold back tears after I just said I wouldn't cry anymore.

"You'll see."

"Not. For. Me."

I stayed facing her, but took a few steps back and trained my eyes on the pavement.

"Maybe we can't be okay"—her voice had a timid quality—"but maybe we're tough and we'll try anyway. Live with what's real… let go of what's past."

That meant Gabe. I glared at her. This was _our_ conversation, and he still managed to worm his way into it.

"And maybe I'll see you at last." Unfazed by my hostility, she met my eyes, her own glistening but determined.

"I don't believe you." I tried to say it scornfully, but my voice sounded the complete opposite—vulnerable. I decided that it was a good time to leave.

After a few steps, my mother stopped me in my tracks by saying, "Seventeen years ago, your brother died of an intestinal obstruction. He was eight months old."

I turned around again. She was surprisingly calm. Sad and tired, yes, but not hysterical and delusional, or any of the other things I'd come to associate with her, especially when she was talking about her dead son.

"I'm sorry we never talked about that." She came towards me and, when I didn't cringe away, tentatively raised a hand and started fixing the crooked collar of my coat. She focused on this action for a moment before looking back at my face. "I'm so sorry we never talked about that. We wanted to give you a normal life, but… I realize I have no clue what that is."

This time, she was the one who started to go; and this time, I was the one who stopped her.

"I don't need a life that's _normal,_ " I said a little choppily, "that's way too far away. But something"—a brief pause while I considered my next words—" _next_ to normal… would be okay. Something next to normal is the thing I'd like to try; close enough to normal to get by."

Much to my surprise, my mom hugged me. I awkwardly hugged her back when she didn't let go. "We'll get by," she echoed breathily.

Pulling away from the embrace, she tucked a stray piece of hair behind my ear and looked me quickly up and down. She then gave me a small smile before ordering, "Now go to your dance."

Obliging was not a chore.


	19. Perfect For You

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Next to Normal.

 **Chapter Nineteen**

Because I was late, the dance was already in full-swing when I arrived. I walked through the empty hallway to get to my locker, where I deposited my things and retrieved the small purse from my backpack. My heels clicked against the tiled floor as I made my way to the gym, the sound rebounding off the walls and reminding me of the piano recital. Something about the situation seemed oddly full-circle: Before, I was walking through silent hallways and pushing Henry away; now, I was walking through silent hallways to find him.

The gym was decorated in white and various shades of pastel. Even I had to—grudgingly—admit that whoever was in charge of jazzing up the place had done a good job. Streamers and tassels and twinkle lights hung from the walls, but they managed to look classy instead of juvenile. Music played in the background, something slow and lyrical. (It wasn't classical, but it wasn't bad.)

Despite the multitude of students in attendance, Henry wasn't difficult to spot. He was hanging out on the periphery of the room, on his own, somewhat-forlornly eying the couples on the dance floor.

I came up beside him, staying a few feet away, and cleared my throat in an attention-grabbing manner. He turned immediately and looked somewhat wonderstruck, either because of how I looked, or the fact I showed up at all, or both.

"Hey," he eventually managed to get out.

"Hey," I said quietly.

"You"—he continued to stare—"look like a star. A vision in blue."

"Oh, I do?"

"And you are." He took a couple steps forward, appearing to snap out of his haze. "Hey—you came."

I mimicked his movements, and we continued to close the gap between us as we spoke. "Well, I said that I might." I gave him a wry smile. True, I had said that, but only once, quickly, and mostly to get him out of the way. I had said "no" far more often.

"I thought we were through, me and you."

My smile dropped and was replaced by a sad look. "Not tonight."

I'd really thought that I was making things better by cutting him off, but that obviously wasn't the case. I had a lot of apologizing to do, and all I could do was wait and see if he would accept it. I absently wondered if this was how my mother had felt during our conversation earlier.

"Will your mom be okay?"

"Well, she might be, someday."

"But for now it's all fine?"

I dropped my gaze. "She's still on my mind."

Although I tried to block it out, as Henry encouraged me to stay in the present with him, I kept replaying the moment when my mom said that we were alike.

"Hey," I said quietly, repeating the interjection when it went unheard, "hey—am I crazy?"

That made him stop.

"I might end up crazy." I felt tears fill my eyes, but I refused to let them fall.

"I'll be here for you," Henry said.

I shook my head. "You say that right here," I reasoned, "but then give it a year, or ten years, or a life…. I could end up your wife. Sitting staring at walls, throwing shit down the stairs, freaking out at the store, running nude down the street, bleeding out in the bath-"

" _Shh."_ He grabbed my hands, silencing me. We stayed that way for a pause, my elevated heartrate slowly returning to normal.

"I will be perfect for you," Henry declared softly. "So you could go crazy, or I could go crazy, it's true."

I felt a smile beginning to form as he spoke, and a laugh escaped upon hearing his last words; he had quite a way of cheering a person up.

"Sometimes life is insane, but crazy I know I can do. Nat, crazy is perfect, and fucked-up is perfect, so I will be perfect for you."

"Perfect for you," I echoed.

Looking in Henry's eyes, I finally believed that he wasn't going to just up and leave. We leaned closer to each other, our lips meeting, and I smiled as we kissed. This was not quite a happy ending, but most happy endings were dumb anyway, and for once, I was content with what I had.


	20. Light

**Author's note:** And we have arrived at the end! Thank you so much for reading it and giving feedback!

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own Next to Normal.

 **Chapter Twenty**

I had fun at the dance, although Henry and I didn't participate much in the actual dancing. We attempted one song, but if sore toes were any indication, neither of us had an ounce of coordination. Instead, we ate party food and drank orange-coloured punch (god only knows what made it so fluorescent, but I'd put much worse things into my body), and hung out on the sidelines and debated Telemann vs. Mose Allison.

Henry and I took the bus back to my house.

"So I'll call you tomorrow," I said, somewhat tentatively, as we stood in the driveway.

"But will you actually?" Henry's tone was playful, but even in the dim lighting, I could tell that his eyes were seriously asking the question.

A humourless chuckle. "I promise," I assured him. "And I will try not to be a jerk anymore. No guarantees on that one, though."

"As long as you call, that's good enough for me." Then he grinned.

Because he was considerate like that, Henry waited to make sure I got into the house before making his own way home. (I had a brief moment of panic when I thought I'd forgotten my key and would have to bang on the door, thus waking the whole neighbourhood, but then I found it at the bottom of my bag.)

It was even darker inside than outside. Even the minor switch from standing near a streetlamp to entering a pitch-black house was a shock. I held my arms out as if to balance myself, standing still while I let myself adjust. It didn't take long before I became realized that the house wasn't completely abandoned, that there was someone sitting in the living room, in the dark, in tears.

"Dad," I said automatically, my quiet voice cutting through the darkness. "What the hell?"

There was no response, but the sniffling ceased.

"Why are all the lights off?" Still nothing. I let the silence continue for longer before asking my next question. "Where's Mom?"

A stammered, congested reply: "She's, uh, she's…"

I got it. "Gone."

Another pause. Then, "Yes."

"So… it's just me and you. For now."

"Yes."

"Okay."

I didn't know how to feel about that. Packing up and leaving entirely was not the kind of change that I would have anticipated. But the last time I saw my mother, she was pretty clear-headed, so she was probably okay to take care of herself—for the time being, anyway. My dad, however, was obviously not thrilled about this new development. Because he was with me and she wasn't, I decided that my mom's actions (as always) were out of my control, and that the best thing that could be done at the moment was hitting a light switch.

"First of all, we need some light," I said firmly, shedding my outdoor wear and abandoning it on the floor to go fumbling for the living room lights. "You can't sit here in the dark and all alone. It's a sorry sight."

The lights came on, causing me and my dad to squint. I absently wondered how the house looked from the street, the sudden blaze so late at night and after such lifelessness.

"It's just you and me, but we'll live. You'll see." I was making all kinds of promises tonight, but I felt confident that I could keep them. "We've waited for too long for all that's wrong to be made right."

My father stood up, smiling a sad smile, and came over and hugged me. I'd come into physical contact with both of my parents in one night, since who knew how long. It was surprising and strange, but I took it to be a sign of improvement.

"Oh, Natalie," Dad sighed. "What would we do without you?"

"You'd be even more fucked," I quipped.

"Language," my dad reprimanded half-heartedly and with a laugh.

Yes, we were going to make it through.

* * *

Over a year had passed since that rollercoaster of a March first. I'd learned a lot in that time, both through a lot of talking with other people and a lot of thinking on my own time. I now knew that pain was just the price you paid to feel, and that you couldn't avoid it, and that you didn't necessarily have to be happy to be happy about being alive. And as for the living component, it wasn't that hard if you just let it happen. Although I was still tempted sometimes, I didn't need to take a cocktail of pills to survive the day, because I knew there would be another day (that could potentially not suck), provided I didn't do something impulsive and stupid.

Henry and I had both graduated high school, and we were both going to college for music (me for performance and him for composition). Needless to say, we were still together. (I'd kept my promise and called him.)

My relationship with my parents was still on the mend (I mean, I spent a decade pretty much hating them, so there was a lot to be mended), but it was a million times better than it had been. Things were sometimes a bit awkward with my mom, who I saw regularly, sometimes on my own and sometimes with my dad.

 _"Do you know where she went? Have you heard from her?" Henry asked._

 _"Oh, I've heard from her." I raised my eyebrows to match my unimpressed tone of voice. "She's staying with my grandparents."_

 _"Do they_ actually _exist?"_

 _I whacked him not-so-lightly on the shoulder. "Yes," I answered sternly, not amused._

 _"So—that's good, right?"_

 _"Well, going home has never been a solution to any of_ my _problems, but-"_

 _"That's what you have me for." He grinned, which prompted me to roll my eyes._

 _"Seriously?" I said, "You're like number three on my List of Issues."_

 _"You keep a_ list?" _he laughed._

 _"Don't worry, Henry," I reassured him, "You're my favourite problem."_

 _"That's all I ask."_

I didn't know how my grandparents had reacted to their adult daughter suddenly arriving on their doorstep. I didn't know how much she'd told them either; we'd shared very little of my mother's mental illness with anyone else, and it seemed a bit cruel to spring the whole story on them at eleven o'clock at night. But in any case, we were all getting better. Mom and Dad both saw therapists, and they were getting over all the stuff they never got over from Gabe's death. They were finally letting him go. Even I was letting him go, the dead boy I'd been so resentful of.

There were some tentative plans in the works. After I left for college in the fall, my mom was going to move back in with my dad. Whether or not she could return to a place of old habits and not fly off the handle remained to be seen, but we were all hopeful.

And so it went on. We were getting by, and while we still weren't quite next to normal, we were getting closer.


End file.
